


Throw It Out to Sea

by anthrop



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Delusions, F/M, Fever Dreams, Food Poisoning, Hospitalization, Hurt/Comfort, Illustrated, Major Illness, Other, Post-Series, Research was done (but never enough)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:55:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 37,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25597651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthrop/pseuds/anthrop
Summary: The flush of the toilet seems twice as loud as it should be, doing Ed's aching head no favors. He groans, carefully setting both seat and lid down, and rests his head against the cool porcelain. His back and shoulder hurt from puking yet a-fucking-gain.His knee and hips hurt from spending half the night knelt on the tile. His whole stupid, traitorous bodyhurts.All he wants is to keep a glass of water down, a blisteringly hot shower, and a solid eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. The best thing for him right now is to stay put if the frantic jig of his stomach is anything to go by. That's all right. He's feeling a mite too shaky to try standing at the moment anyway.
Relationships: Alphonse Elric & Edward Elric, Edward Elric/Winry Rockbell, Mei Chan | May Chang/Alphonse Elric
Comments: 182
Kudos: 176
Collections: FMA Big Bang 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the FMA Big Bang '20 event on Tumblr! This is an idea that's been kicking around in my cranium for _ages_ now, and this is the first year I've felt confident enough to participate in a big bang. I'm so excited to share this story with you all! Big shout-out to my collaborating artist, [justsigneduptolookattags!](https://justsigneduptolookattags.tumblr.com) I loved workin' with ya. <3 Thanks to the event mods for putting everything together too! Also, have a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5z72wX4CMx1c435NzVftZw?si=mLFkePa-SoeBarBnLTvW7Q).
> 
> Tags will be added as chapters are posted, though I intend to be intentionally vague on some things. I will say that while the fic idea hasn't changed overmuch since I first started plinking away at it, the world very much has. This will be a story dealing with serious illness, and in some places it may resemble the current pandemic to an uncomfortable degree. You can DM me at [my tumblr](https://anthropwashere.tumblr.com) for details if this could be too difficult a topic to wade into without proper warning.

_Dried up, a guitar upon my knee  
_ _I should have sold out when the devil came for me  
_ _Dig a hole and throw it out to sea  
_ _Break the code, how happy I could be_

The flush of the toilet seems twice as loud as it should be, doing Ed's aching head no favors. He groans, carefully setting both seat and lid down, and rests his head against the cool porcelain. His back and shoulder hurt from puking yet a-fucking _-gain._ His knee and hips hurt from spending half the night knelt on the tile. His whole stupid, traitorous body _hurts._ All he wants is to keep a glass of water down, a blisteringly hot shower, and a solid eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. The best thing for him right now is to stay put if the frantic jig of his stomach is anything to go by. That's all right. He's feeling a mite too shaky to try standing at the moment anyway.

The bathroom door rattles impatiently. "Dad? Da-a-a-ad!"

So much for that.

"Leave him alone," he hears Winry scold. "He doesn't feel good."

"But I gotta _go."_

"S'alright," he calls out hoarsely. "C'mon in."

The door swings wide, thumping against the wall. Nina swarms him, Winry hanging back. A discordant burst of movement his eyes flinch from. "You're _still_ sick?" Nina asks, astounded.

"Uh-huh."

"But you _never_ get sick! Not in my whole entire _life!"_

"You're not that old, bud."

"Give him some space," Winry says. To Ed she asks, "How are you feeling?"

He grunts, opting to focus more on getting his feet under him than on lying. She'd see right through him; waste of time to try. And anyway, he's actually having to pay attention to where his limbs want to wander. He must be pretty damn dehydrated if he's this dizzy. He keeps a hard grip on the towel rack for balance, grimacing as his head pounds.

"Can I have some privacy, please?" Nina demands. "It's _aw-full-ly_ crowded in here."

"You can hang on another minute," Ed grumbles, swaying past her to the sink. He washes his face, rinses out his mouth, drags damp fingers through his hair. He risks a glance at the mirror and regrets it. He looks about as good as he feels; flushed and greasy, shadows under his drooping eyes from a night spent staggering between the bathroom and bedroom and back again all while his stomach does the goddamn can-can. Ugh. No wonder Winry's looking at him like that.

He shuts the bathroom door behind him to let Nina pee in peace, sagging against the frame. Mm. Pressure feels good on his shoulder. He's going to be so fucking _sore_ after this runs its course.

"What did you _eat?"_ Winry asks. She sounds torn between amusement and genuine concern.

His eyes shutter closed of their own accord, too heavy to keep open. He's too tired to deal with Winry making that face at him anyway. "Dunno. Be nice if it quit kickin' my ass though."

"Have you been able to keep anything down? Water?"

His stomach clenches. It must show on his face because suddenly the back of her hand—startlingly cool—is pressed to his forehead. He flinches, knocking his head against the wall hard enough to rattle a nearby picture frame. His whole skull _throbs._ Gravity makes a brave show of trying to drag him straight to the hardwood floor. He pops his knuckles on the doorframe as he catches himself; a secondary crack of pain that barely registers.

He squints at Winry through the flicker of his migraine. Her hands are hovering, not quite daring to touch him again. "Don't," he says thickly.

Her hands drop. "You're warm."

He doesn't say anything. Just figures, is all.

She huffs as the toilet flushes. "I'll bring some tea up in a bit. You try and get some rest, okay?"

His stomach clenches again. He keeps it off his face this time, barely. "Go easy on the honey?"

"I'll double up on the milk to make up for it," she teases.

Ugh. He can't even remember the last time somebody tricked him into drinking milk, but he does remember the awful taste of it. How it lingers on the tongue, in his throat; heavy, thick, _cloying—_

"I was kidding," she says, dismayed.

He turns to knock on the door, flinching at the volume. "Time's up, bud."

After some mysterious bangs and clatters that rattle like hail against Ed's tender skull, Nina yanks the door open and bolts between their legs with a, "Thanks!" tossed over her shoulder. Ed staggers back to the toilet, jaw and abs both clenched tight, catching himself against the bowl so his knee can't crack the tile. He half-expects Winry to say something else, but he only hears the bathroom door shut quietly, then her footsteps diminishing down the hall. He spares half a thought of gratitude her way; grateful for the peace, grateful she didn't get this shit too, grateful she can wrangle the kids while he's out of commission.

Mostly though, all he can think about is how goddamn _sick_ of being sick he is.

* * *

The next time Ed stumbles out of the bathroom Winry's there again, waiting for him with a mug and a bottle of acetaminophen. His stomach only manages a weary flip-flop at the bitter smell of the tea, and it feels more like habit than a warning. A good sign, hopefully.

"Bed," she orders without preamble.

He follows her on auto-pilot to their bedroom. She's drawn the curtains shut and turned the ceiling fan on low. It's a slow and steady hum, comfortably familiar. She guides him to the bed, tuts over a scratch on his left knee and a bruise on his right as he gingerly stretches his legs out. In the time it takes him to dry swallow two pills she magics up a thermometer. He gives her a disbelieving look that slides right off of her terrible bedside manner.

"Be grateful I didn't grab the one that goes in the other end," she says, popping it in his mouth.

"You—"

She pokes his nose. _"Hush."_

He scowls while she primps the pillows and smoothes the blanket, then plucks the dumb thermometer out of his mouth once she's deemed enough time has passed. His scowl slips when she frowns. "That bad?"

"Higher than I'd hoped," she admits. "Drink your tea and try to get some sleep. I'm gonna call Doctor Brahim."

"It's just a little food poisoning," he protests. "Don't call him. I'm probably through the worst of it by now."

"You said that three hours ago," she retorts with a quelling look. "Drink your tea. Get some sleep. And _don't_ go wandering off to your study again. You need to _rest."_

"What if I gotta hurl?"

She produces a wastebasket, setting it down by his nightstand with aplomb. 

He's not impressed. "And if it starts comin' out the other end again?"

"Then you've got my permission to go to the bathroom. I'm sure as hell not cleaning that up."

"Gee, thanks."

She rolls her eyes. "You must be feeling better if you're getting sassy."

He's not, actually. For all that he's not currently doing his level best to puke his small intestine out, he's pretty sure that can only be attributed to having wrung his stomach dry sometime around dawn. The last three times he puked it was just the tap water he'd tried and failed to keep down. Still. He probably really is through the worst of it by now. No need to make Winry worry. He brings the mug to his lips and pretends to sip so she'll stop tapping her foot at him.

"I won't ask him to come by yet," she relents, immediately following it with a threat to make sure he stays put. "I'll be up in a bit to check on you."

He grunts through a legitimate, albeit cautious, sip of tea. Winry takes that as her cue to tiptoe out of the bedroom, not quite closing the door behind her. He rolls her eyes and takes another sip. He thinks this one is from the box of goodies Al sent a few months back for his birthday, because Al's a giant sap and can't let any excuse to send gifts go by without taking advantage of it. It's some kind of feel-good, qi vibe-sensing bullshit improvement mix; heavy on the ginger with something floral to soften the bitter bite. He can recall the Xingese characters stamped on the tin box it came in easily. What the translation is? _Pfft._

He takes another sip, playing chicken with his own nausea to sate his dehydration. He's not normally one for ginger-anything, but he knows it's one of the safer things to have when your stomach's no longer sure which way is up. So far, at least, his stomach seems fairly indifferent to the intrusion. If he takes it slow maybe he'll be able to keep the whole mug down. That'd be nice. For all that his gut feels like someone's gone after it with a trowel he knows it's not wise to go without fluids as long as he has. May as well take the risk on this weird, Al-gifted, Winry-approved tea.

He breathes between sips. Slow, shallow, controlled. Bullying his stomach into cooperation. He _needs_ to keep something down, otherwise he's gonna end up dragged downstairs to get fluids pumped into him through a tube. No _thank_ you. 

He breathes, riding out a sullen stomach cramp. Enough. _Enough._

He's had enough.

* * *

He doesn't finish the tea.

He doesn’t even manage to keep what he did drink down, for that matter.

* * *

Ed's not sure what wakes him up, only that consciousness tugs at his attention, insistently enough to drag him out of the miserable murk of fevered sleep. He blinks, taking in nothing. Sickness has made him stupid and sluggish; it takes a small eternity before he notices that the light leaking through the sea-blue curtains has deepened, scorched orange by the afternoon heat. It's really fucking warm in here.

A weight crawls up the bed, followed by a whispered, _"Mooey, no!"_ Then he feels prodding up his thigh, narrowly missing his dick, then Al's stupid cat plops down on his aching stomach.

"Mmph," he protests.

"Brr?" Al's stupid cat asks.

Maes appears by the wastebasket, looking torn between glaring at the cat and staring at Ed. "Sorry," he whispers. "He ran in before I could get 'im."

"Mmph," he says.

Maes looks apologetic, and then properly nervous the longer he looks at Ed. Not a good sign. It takes a monumental effort to swallow his swollen tongue enough to speak. His mouth is a fucking desert. "Y'okay?"

"Yeah," Maes says, too quickly. A bald-faced lie. Kid worries about everything. Ed doesn't know how to tell him to stop. "Are you?"

Moving even that small amount has woken up a laundry list of aches and pains. His hands and foot are on fire, prickles working their way greedily up to his armpits and groin. His spine is an old rubber hose. For all that it's like he's been eating sand it sure tastes like he's been sucking on raw sewage. He feels like he's aged 20 years while he was asleep, which is really just the cherry on top. This is why he never naps anymore if he can help it. "M'okay. Where's your Mom?"

"Downstairs, in the showroom. She's gonna call the doctor for you after she closes up for the day."

Al's stupid cat starts kneading his hip. Ed feels its rusty purr shiver up his side more than he hears it. He doesn't have the energy to mind its claws catching in his skin through the blanket and his boxers. Then again, he can hardly tell the difference from cat claws and the warm prickle running through his whole body. His fever must have crept higher. Maybe it is a good idea to have Sidi stop by after all. 

"Mmph," he says a third time. Vague noises really are all he can manage. He's pretty sure if he tried to sit up right now he'd end up falling over himself reaching for the wastebasket. Frankly he's too damn tired to puke anymore, and he sure as hell doesn't want Maes to see him at it either.

"D'you want me to take him?" Maes asks, pointing.

"Mm. S'fine."

"'Kay. I'm gonna go now. Feel better?"

He manages a lackluster wave as Maes slinks out of the bedroom. Al's stupid cat blinks slowly at him, settling down for a nap of its own. Little bastard. A loaf of marshmallow white fur and street cat muscle. Winry must have bullied it into a bath recently if it looks this clean. When did she do that? The damn thing always kicks up such a fuss, it's practically a two-person job. When had she done that?

He can't remember.

He's so thirsty. He's so fucking _thirsty._ The mug of tea is gone from his nightstand, a sweating glass of water in its place. Winry must have brought it when she came up to check on him. His right hand's such a tingling, prickling mess of nerve damage he can't trust it to hold the condensation-slick glass on its own. Funny. He hasn't had a day this bad since after his second shoulder surgery, and that was years ago. 

The cold water is a fucking _balm_ for his dry mouth, rinsing out the vaguely metallic-tasting fur on his tongue for all that it hurts to swallow. The second it hits his stomach he knows he's made another mistake.

He breathes.

He breathes.

He's had food poisoning before. Twice, actually. And sure, they'd been their own humbling little slices of hell, but neither time had been as bad as this one's turned out to be. Maybe he should be concerned after all.

* * *

"Ed?"

Awake again, with no memory of having shut his eyes.

He blinks owlishly at his nightstand. He'd rolled over in his sleep, apparently. His wedding band is bright, solid, real. He, on the other hand, feels... soft. Sunken. Disconnected. Unreal.

"You awake?"

Paninya's voice, weirdly hushed. She's worried. He can count on one hand how many times he's heard her sound like this. Not a good sign.

He tries to grunt confirmation. It comes out as a kind of weird sigh instead, irritated and weary. It doesn't sound a thing like him. He's baffled by the ghost in his throat.

She appears at his bedside, a dim shape in a dim room. The last of the afternoon sunlight coming in through the gauzy curtains gleams off her eyes and teeth. "Jeez, Winry wasn't kidding. You look like shit."

"Mmph," is hardly worth the effort. His tongue feels swollen, pinched between his teeth. It unsticks from the roof of his mouth reluctantly, like picking at a scab. "Time's'it?"

"Almost six. You've slept the whole day away, lazybones. How you feeling?"

Ed takes stock.

His skin's... wrong. Ill-fitting, bristling with heat like a sweat-stiffened coat. Squirming and prickling. The numb shock of electricity running raggedly through his nerves. He feels sensationary. Deadened and overwhelmed at the same time. The thought of moving an inch sounds like the worst possible idea ever conceived.

It's so fucking _hot_ in here.

"Ed?"

Oh. Right.

"Bad," he admits grudgingly.

"When's the last time you hurled?" 

"Mm. Morning." 

"Well that's somethin', anyway. Here, let's get some more water in ya before Winry comes up, huh?"

Paninya takes the empty glass—when did he finish drinking it?—and slides out of his peripheral. The floors creak underfoot as she leaves the bedroom and goes down the hall. Vague, incomprehensible sounds from the bathroom. The floors creak on her way back. She huffs, muttering something he can't understand. "C'mon, you big lump. Sit up."

Oh. Right. Hydration's easier when you're vertical.

He glares at his hand, his arm; bullying his limbs into cooperating by sheer force of will. His neck cracks when he moves, prickling heat racing down his right arm and setting all the fingers of that hand on fire. Seems like his shoulder's decided to pitch a real fit on top of everything else. Just figures. He changes tactics, rolling over to sit up without involving Righty at all—

 _Pain_ knifes through him without the slightest warning, hard and unexpected enough to startle a noise out of him that makes Paninya jerk back. It's the same kind of brutal agony as a kick to the stomach; he's left breathless and aching and bruisingly _hot,_ certain he'll taste blood if he coughs. He flops onto his back, gasping.

A blissfully cold hand touches his arm for a second. Paninya swears and the hand vanishes, then presses against his forehead. _"Fuck,"_ she hisses, withdrawing again.

"Wh—" He breaks off coughing, an involuntary cry curdling out of him on its heels. It's like his stomach's full of _nails,_ what the _fuck—_

"I'm getting Winry," Paninya says, urgent, and bolts out of the bedroom.

Ed can't even muster a weak protest; he isn't all that inclined to protest the worry anymore, actually. For all that he hates making any kind of fuss when he's sick or hurt, he _knows_ now. This is bad. Dangerously bad, maybe, if he's too wrung out to even sit up.

There's a querying chirp from somewhere on the bed. Fuck's sake. Even Al's stupid cat sounds worried about him.

His stomach roils, audibly and physically. He curls onto his side, burying his moan into his sweat-damp pillow. It's so hot in here. He's so hot. His skin's on fire. Fire ants. There's a swarm of them biting furiously beneath his skin. If he moves something inside him will rupture. He doesn't know if that will bring further pain, or relief.

He breathes. It's all he can manage.

Footsteps charge up the stairs, down the hall, into the bedroom. The yellow lights from the neon sign across the street catch on Winry's hair, staining it the same warm gold as his own. "Ed?" Deliciously cold hands touch his face again, rough-palmed and familiar. Comforting. He leans into her touch with a groan, certain in his trust. Winry's here. He'll be just fine.

She hisses through her teeth. "Pan, call Doctor Brahim. Tell him to come straight away." Paninya's murmured answer. Paninya's heavy tread out of the bedroom, down the hall, down the stairs. "Ed? Hey, look at me. Talk to me. What's going on?"

It's like he has to swallow a pine cone to speak. How the fuck was he talking to Paninya just a minute ago? "Nngh. I—Winr _—haughk._ I, ah, I dunno—"

"Symptoms," she demands flatly. Her voice has wound down to that of the calm clinician, a brusque tone he normally only hears her use when she's trussed up in surgical scrubs. It's a voice that tolerates no bullshit dilly-dallying. 

"Hot," is the first thing that pops out of his mouth. "Stomach's—swollen?"

"Nausea?"

"Uh-uh." He's in too much pain to even consider puking. "Neu—um. Peri—" He rides out a fresh flush of heated knives perforating his guts through clenched teeth. He doesn't have the capacity to say _peripheral neuropathy_ so he settles for, "Hands—foot _—hurt—"_

"Okay," Winry says. "You need to get up now. I got you. Just listen to me. We'll get you taken care of—" She gets his right arm over her shoulders—the stretch almost feels good under the prickle and burn of his skin—and leverages him carefully upright. His gut _throbs;_ he can't help the anguished noise he makes. It feels like recovering from Baschool all over again. What the fuck is _wrong_ with him? "—Easy! _Easy,_ Ed. I know. I know. We gotta get you downstairs, 'kay? C'mon. Hardest part's right here. C'mon—"

Sheer spit and vinegar gets him out of the bed. It's his automail that keeps him up on his left side, Winry shoring up his right. His metal joints clank and clatter, shuddering to match the numbing weakness shivering through the rest of him. The room spins, his vision tunneling as his head _pounds._ It's like the first time he ever got properly staggering drunk, or the first time he rode a rollercoaster, or like a spectacular concussion. His stomach tries to pirouette clear out of him; he shuts his eyes and bobs along stupidly while Winry all but hauls him bodily down the hall.

Symptoms, she'd demanded. She needs to know his symptoms. He should—

He should take stock.

He should take better stock.

He should tell her how he feels, so she'll have a better idea of what to do with him. She'll figure it out, or Sidi will when he gets here. But they'll need data to make sense of him and whatever the fuck this food poisoning is doing to him. He loses control of his knees as he focuses more on thinking instead of walking; his clumsy stagger into a wall is acceptable collateral for his efforts.

"Throat hurts," he slurs. "Mm—metal taste. M _-metallic._ Migraine. Cr-cramps—" A horrible wheeze rattles out of him that he can only blink incredulously at. He was breathing fine a second ago. Wasn't he? Why is it so much harder to breathe now?

He's upright—arguably. Mobile—just as arguably. He's 98% sure he'd be a heap on the floor if not for Winry. She's strong as hell, sure, but he's not exactly light and his skeleton feels like charred spaghetti. How are they going to navigate all the damn stairs down to the clinic? What the hell caused this? What if it wasn't something he ate after all? Something environmental? Something catching? Something—

—another pained cry frays between his clenched teeth when Winry adjusts her grip—

 _"—sorry,_ sorry—"

—and he wheezes again, lungs cramping too sharply to allow for more than shallow panting. _"Kids,"_ he chokes out. "K-keep 'em away—"

"—I know. I will. C'mon now, careful, first step comin' up—"

Winry keeps talking, unhurried assurances to keep him focused on the task at hand. Stairs. He fumbles for the banister, wedding band cracking loudly against the wood. If it hurts he can't differentiate it from the pins and needles already sunk into him. He has to look to prove he's got a grip; even then he can't be sure how much use it is. Winry's voice in his ear, a litany of calm comforts as incomprehensible as Siglosian to him. He understands her tone, not her words. She's afraid and trying not to show it. She's tamping her own strain to focus on his pain.

A thought chills him, hand sliding off the banister. If he's sick with something catching, she shouldn't be near him. For her own health, obviously. Doubly so for the baby's. Right? He tries to shrug her off, grunting when that just makes her hang on harder. 

"It's okay, I got you," she says as they practically trip down to the landing. 

He's going to drag her down with him at this rate. Too much. He's too much. He's gotta get off her. Away from her. He can walk down the stairs on his own. Course he can. He's not _that_ sick, right?

"Ed, stop squirming. What are you _—ow!_ Hey!"

He wriggles free at last, and promptly cants into the wall. A picture frame goes crashing but he doesn't hear glass shatter so he's still going to call this a win. He clings white-knuckled to the banister, squints at a divot of paint as if focusing on something an inch from his nose will stop the world from spinning off its axis. It doesn't. He wants to tell Winry he's fine, really, he can manage on his own. Weird though; he can't get his mouth to do what he wants it to. His throat either, for that matter. He tries to swallow and the whole instinctive motion fails him. Muscles twitch fruitlessly. He can't speak.

"Ed—"

Hard to breathe.

"Hey, Ed—"

Harder to breathe.

"Hey, look at me, c'mon—"

There's still an entire flight of stairs to navigate. They're on the landing. The kitchen is quiet and dark. One small light on in the far living room corner. Where are the kids? It's late. Isn't it? Maes wouldn't still be at school, right? Ed's got a vague memory of Maes' pinched face, Al's stupid cat kneading his hip. That was today, wasn't it?

Winry keeps talking, but it's like his tunnel vision has extended to the rest of his senses. Everything that isn't his immediate has gone long-range, out of touch, like he's one gasp away from going underwater completely. He's all too aware of what this feeling means. The return of the damn nausea though, he could do without. He'd prefer not to make a mess on the stairs. It'd be a bitch to clean up and in the state he's in it wouldn't be him doing the cleaning.

His grip slips. He wavers away from the kitchen, toward a yawning gray nothing.

_"Ed—!"_

Blacking out honestly comes as a relief.

* * *

Cool, quiet, dark.

It's the shivering that wakes him.

It's so cold. _He's_ so cold. It's the North all over again, avoiding frostbitten stumps by sheer luck and the skin of his teeth. Shaking so hard it hurts to breathe. Muscles cramp. His leg rattles against something else that's metal.

Where is he?

There aren't any lights on. He has a vague sense of unfamiliar space, of his trembling exhale striking his ears strangely. Empty walls, empty space. The mattress is hard and narrow, the sheets thin and starched. The air reeks of antiseptic, lemon-scented. 

A hospital, he realizes with a dull and sluggish sort of horror. He's in a _hospital._

It takes a small eternity to get himself upright. He sits there, gasping, marveling at how unbelievably _shitty_ he feels. The ants under his skin have turned into wasps, and there are at least a couple of scorpions raising merry hell in his guts to go with them. His skull feels like someone's been using him as a battering ram. He shivers, teeth chattering. Where'd his shirt go?

He tries to swallow and chokes instead. Tries again, chokes again. He tamps down the baffling urge to panic. _Breathe,_ dipshit. Breathe.

His mouth tastes like he's been sucking on dirty cenz. He's so fucking _thirsty._ His vertebrae creak when the idea finally occurs to him to look around. Dim blue shapes, deepening grays, ink-dark corners. He can't see shit. Something niggles anyway. The window, leaking orange light from outside. The door, a fey yellow outline. The placement is something familiar, a buoy to cling to while his thoughts spin idle circles. He shivers again, twitching when something tugs weirdly at his inner elbow. A touch confirms what he dreads to find.. There's an IV attached to his arm. Someone put a _needle_ in his _arm._

No way. Abso-fuckin' _-lutely_ not. He's out. He doesn't care what Winry might say. He didn't agree to this. He's fine. It's just a little food poisoning. He's feeling better anyway. Really. So it takes him a couple tries to get the _fucking_ IV out. So he's kind of bleeding all over the place now. Whatever. It doesn't hurt. It's not serious. He just needs to slap some gauze on it, drink some water, sleep this off. He's fine. He'll be fine.

The ground comes out of nowhere and socks him in the face.

“Oof,” he says.

Footsteps in another room. The door opens in a searing blaze of light. He hisses through his teeth, slapping his face in his haste to cover his eyes. He hears the slap but doesn't feel it. He's too full of wasps. Was he in an accident? Has he been drugged? Is that why everything feels so off-kilter?

"Ed—? Oh my god, what did you _do?"_

Winry's all over him out of nowhere, tugging on his arms, hauling him up to sit on the edge of the hospital bed. Her eyes catch the light spilling in, gleaming catlike in the dark. She witters on about blood and idiocy, which is old news as far as he's concerned. He watches her hands squeeze his forearm, fingers dimpling his skin. He can't feel it.

He can't _feel_ it.

She's drugged him.

She's only ever put him on anything this strong when they were still kids. When she and Pinako cut him open and filled him full of metal and wires.

Oh, _god._

"N-no," he slurs, tugging feebly. Let go. Let him _go._

"Ed?"

"M'fine. Don't. Please. I can't. Not again."

"What? I need to get this cleaned up. You know better than to go tearing IVs out, seriously, what the hell—"

He shoves her.

He's too clumsy, too weak. She only staggers back a step, but it's enough. She stares at him, aghast. He ignores it; the hurt on her face, the guilt squeezing his throat so tightly he can only wheeze weak platitudes. "Sorry. M’sorry, but _—don't._ Don't cut it off."

"What?"

She ought to know. _She ought to know._ Why doesn't she know?

He hauls himself to his feet, wanting _out_ of this hospital room, but his right leg gives out and he goes clattering to the floor again. At least one tile cracks under his automail but he can't find a shit to give about that. He slaps Winry's looming hand away. _"Don't!"_

She retreats out of his wavering reach. "...You're sick, Ed. Please let me help you."

The room heaves with his panting, sweat running in rivulets down the walls. He can't tell if it's his arms that shake under his weight or the ground under his hands. "Al _—hhgh, hah—_ won't forgive you."

"What are you talking about?"

He's on all fours like a dog. May as well beg like one too. "Don't cut my arm off. _Please,_ Win. I can't do that again. I _can't._ "

She leans back. She stands very still. "...Okay. Okay, Ed. I promise. Can I please look at your left arm—"

_"NO!"_

"—your _left_ arm! You're bleeding, Ed, please—"

She's not listening. _She's not listening._

She _won't_ listen. 

Always so certain she's right. Always so goddamn self-righteous. He can’t stand it. He has to get out of here. Al'll kill them both if he lets Winry cut his arm off, and then maybe cry after, which would be a million times worse. So what if his arm's acting up? The nerves in his shoulder are always tetchy. He's fine. He doesn't need her to cut it off. He's _fine._

"Get off," he snarls, swiping blindly to keep her away. He just. Needs a minute. To get his breath back. Get his legs under him. Once he's out of this _fucking_ hospital and back home again Winry will see that he's fine. She will. He's fucking fine.

"No, you're not," she says.

_"Fuck you."_

They look at each other. Him, mashed up in a heap against the hospital bed. Her, stood in the middle of the room with her hands hovering over the slight swell of her belly. 

Maybe that was the wrong thing to say?

Footsteps in another room. Silhouettes appear in the doorway. He knows them before they can give themselves away by speaking. What the hell are they doing at the hospital?

"He okay?" Paninya asks.

"Uh-uh," Winry answers. "Garfield, can you get me five milligrams of—"

"Don't you fuckin' dare," he snarls. "Don't you fuckin' _touch_ me."

She ignores him.

_She ignores him._

She looks him in the eye and tells Garfiel to get more drugs to sedate him with until Sidi gets here and has the _gall_ to put herself between him and Garfiel when he tries to lunge to his feet to stop the fucker from doing any such thing.

"It's fine," she lies to his face. "You don't need to worry, Ed. You know you can trust me."

 _Trust_ her. Like hell. She's going to take his fucking arm and fill him full of steel for shits and giggles, and who's to say she'll stop at just an arm? She's fucking twisted. _She's_ the one who's fucking sick. Nothing would make her happier than to cut him open, to saw something else off of him, and if he lets her do it once she'll do it a hundred times. She'll turn him into mincemeat. She'll retrofit every inch of him if she gets her way. She hates him. Or worse, she just decided he's not worth enough the way he is now. She'll risk killing him just to boost the Rockbell name. 

"Fuck you," he snarls again, trying and only partially succeeding at bracing himself on the hospital bed. Wetness smears across his palm.

"Ed," Garfiel chastises, talking at him like he's stupid and naive and underfoot, too much trouble and not worth the effort. Ed fucking _hates_ that tone of voice from anybody, doesn't matter who, so he does the only sensible thing and takes a swing at Garfiel's stupid face. The ground gets in the way again, lunging up and tangling his feet. He goes sprawling, left to gasp and gawk at the lot of them circling like vultures. How did Garfiel end up all the way over there?

"C'mon, man," Paninya laughs nervously, teleporting from the doorway to kneel at his side. Her hand is icy on his bare shoulder. He can't figure out if it feels good or if he wants to make her bleed for touching him. He settles on instinct, swinging out with his left hand, and finds grim satisfaction in the meaty hit of his knuckles against her tit. She grunts and swears, falling flat on her ass.

 _"Ha,"_ he barks, and then, _"Augh,"_ because the scorpions in his gut decide, apropos of fuckall, to start stinging. He falls back against the hard frame of the hospital bed, scrabbling at his stomach and hoping that will make them _stop._ His back is nothing but hard knots, burning bright and unyielding. He's sick. Something's very wrong. He wants to go home.

Winry appears where Paninya was, hands outstretched again. Her wedding band glints in the light falling through the doorway. "You're sick," she says, gentle. "Please let me help you."

"I wanna go home," he tells her. Begs her. He knows he can't get there on his own.

Her face twists. "You _are_ home, Ed. We're in the operating room—"

 _"I knew it!"_ He swipes at her again, though she's too far off to make contact. Fine by him. _"Bitch._ Don't fuckin' touch me. You're not taking my arm again!"

"What the fuck," Paninya whispers from somewhere near Garfiel. Winry makes a shushing gesture without breaking eye contact with Ed. 

"Don't be stupid, I'm not taking anything—"

"Then why'd you _drug_ me?!"

 _"I didn't—!"_ She covers her eyes briefly, breathing deep. "Edward. Listen to me. You have a very high fever and you're badly dehydrated. There's only saline in that IV drip. We're at home. We're in the—we're in here because I wanted to put you on fluids. You haven't been able to keep anything down. You also fell down the stairs and hit your head—"

He reaches up and touches gauze. See? _See?_ She's already been working on him. She's already cut him open, cut into his _skull—_

Out. He has to get out. He'll be safe once he's home. Lock her out. Hide the kids—

No, wait. He—he's sick. Catching. Can't go near the kids—

He's fine, he's fine, he's fine, _he has to be fine,_ he's got to save the kids from Winry, he can't let her get them too—

She wouldn't, she wouldn't, she wouldn't? Why would she? Why would she hurt them? Why would she hurt _him?_

His head's pounding. He can’t catch his breath. Wounded? Sick? In no shape to fight. In no shape to run either but he _has_ to run, he has to get out of here, he has to—

"The first step's the hardest," Winry says brightly, a child's voice, high and cheering, but when he looks she's grown and pale and scared.

"Ed," Paninya says. Her hands are up; placating, but ready to block too. "You know Win would never hurt you. You're really sick. Let us help, okay?"

When he tries to swallow he only chokes on dirty cenz, sun-warmed and rattling in his throat, his stomach, his lungs. Pain rattles through him too, pain enough to scare him still and stupid. The hole Kimblee put through his gut long ago is back again. He's sure of it. If he looks down his lap will be full of blood steaming in the biting cold of Baschool. If he looks down he'll see the blood-dark shadow of an organ bulging out of him. He's going to die. He can't close the wound this time. If he clapped now nothing would happen.

He's very sick. He knows that. He doesn't want it to be true, but it is.

He can trust Winry. Can't he?

Hasn't he always?

When the ground swims up again he's sure there are teeth that bite down, and laughter too, but he doesn't have the strength left to fight anymore. He doesn't have the breath to warn Winry and the others to run either. The scorpions have poisoned him all the way through. 


	2. Chapter 2

Ed dreams. That much he's sure of.

Flickers of nonsense, suggestions of scenes rather than anything concrete to ground himself in. Motes floating in a beam of sunlight. A stained glass window. A steaming cup of coffee. The sound of horseshoes on a cobblestone street. Fresh fish laid out on a bed of ice. An automail arm displayed in a velvet-draped case. The shocking, brassy joy of a live band. A voice in his ear, the words indistinct over the louder chatter of crowds. Always the crowds. Chasing him, pushing him, hemming him in, indifferent to him, a part of him. Smears of motion and color and smells, perfume or coal dust or trash or grilled meat or antiseptic—

_—a slice of dark skin, a wrist glimpsed between the edges of a latex glove and a pristine white sleeve—_

The dreams shift, become firmer scraps of recollection. Detailed enough to call it backdrop for all that they're still unfinished sketches. There, the rolling fields of Resembool blanketed in snow. There, the perfect geometry of a parade field, soldiers stood in equally perfect formations. There, the sandstone pillars of Dà Yōng jutting hundreds of meters high into the misty morning air. There, the impossible blue of the Great Sea stretching beyond the horizon, and the sight of it inspires such awe in him that he can only stand there, breathing it in.

Crowds again. Crowds everywhere he finds himself. Pieces of his life filled with people without faces, voices he knows but no one familiar when he looks to find the source. Shoulders and elbows and kids hardly any older than his own banging carelessly against his legs, and he has to check each and every one of them to make sure they haven't bruised themselves on his knee. The price of good automail is bruises, one he's glad to pay. It's far more preferable to a lifetime spent hobbling around on cheaper models, but he lives with low-grade anxiety of another baby tooth getting knocked out or Al's stupid cat earning another crook in its tail—

_—white lights glaring in his eyes, harsh and artificial, fluttering shadows, the urgent clamor of raised voices—_

One wrong step is all it takes. He knows that better than most.

He dreams—remembers?—Mei dragging them all further and further southeast until they arrive at the Nányáng Ocean. They slump against each other in mutual wonder, forgetting the breathless stickiness of the coast, the white sand getting into his joints, Winry's terrible sunburn. How could he call the Great Sea impressive when compared to something so vast as _this?_

He dreams—remembers?—arduous weeks spent slow-roasting on horseback across the Great Desert. Breda telling ridiculous stories from growing up out West and his Academy years, Armstrong telling stories of his family's illustrious history, Mr. Han telling stories about a dozen different cities in Yao territory that he's lived in. Ed had told stories too, in the mornings before the heat began to blister the scarring under his automail; about Resembool, about Dublith, about the wild escapades he and Al got up to after he'd earned his pocket watch. He remembers being too tired and hot to laugh then, but he remembers all those stories fondly still.

He dreams—remembers?—blood and darkness. Too many injuries, too many sleepless nights. He's dealt with far too much of both, compared to most people his age. Even in a country as hungry for conflict as Amestris he knows he's seen too much. His neighbors hardly know how to talk to him sometimes. If not for Winry there to smooth ruffled feathers—

_—her hand in his, her eyes wet and red-rimmed, her voice calling his name—_

—he'd hardly ever be able to muddle his way through a normal conversation.

The dreams shift, and shift, and deepen, and settle. He still knows he's dreaming, but he'll take what stability he can get.

Another body of water lapping against another coast. The water is summer-bright, a hundred thousand shards of sunlight cutting his vision until he has to drop his gaze, blinking away after images. He sees himself. Two arms, two legs. The body of a child. He looks up, shielding his eyes. He knows this horizon, a colorful city hedged in by forest. He's found his footing in Dublith, of all places.

He scrunches his toes, reveling in the sensation of having ten of them again. There are bones beneath his feet; small, knobbly, sun-bleached shapes. Knuckle bones. Human teeth. The tiny vertebrae of tiny creatures. Fox skulls grin thither and yon.

Al swings his arms back and then forward, tossing his fishing line out beyond the gentle waves. He tosses a grin Ed's way too. "Forty-seventh time's the charm, yeah?"

"Yeah," Ed laughs. He marvels at the smallness of Al, baby-faced and short again, as Al had remained in his mind for too many years. 

"Hopefully none of them come and steal our dinner again tonight, huh?" Al asks, nodding at the fox skulls.

Ed remembers Yock Island. A full month spent balanced on the knife's edge of starvation, for all that Izumi mocked them for thinking it that. Their days spent trying and failing and trying again to catch a meal, their nights spent fighting Mason in his wolf mask tooth and nail to keep it. He can't believe how long ago this was. He's flummoxed by how real it feels now.

"Yeah," he repeats, following a script he knows by rote. He opens his mouth and memory falls out. "We'll be ready for 'em this time if they do come though. The foxes and that guy, huh?"

Al's grin is all teeth. Ed's never understood why people think _he's_ the dangerous one. He still relishes the memory of the first time Mustang saw Al grin like this. That _oh, well that explains a lot_ expression on his face had left Ed cackling for days after.

"Oh!" Al exclaims before Ed can say his next line _—"Wonder what that guy looks like under the mask."—_ and then Al's hauling back on his fishing line. The thin wood of his pole bends nearly to its breaking point, but Al's always been the clever one between them; he coaxes his catch in inch by patient inch where Ed would have hauled too roughly and lost it altogether. The mirror-bright water bursts in a dizzying flash of white and silver and tan. Ed recoils while Al holds fast—

_—gray morning light, beeping machinery, a feeling like something crawled down his mouth and made a nest in his throat—_

—and dinner comes flopping to their feet in a last desperate scramble. Ed would feel bad, as he always used to when he watched a fish gasp, but this… this isn’t….

Al whoops, jumping and punching the air to celebrate his victory. Ed stumbles back, his knee-jerk horror cut cleanly between his snapped-together teeth. He gawks as Al kneels to carefully pull the rough-hewn hook free of the thing's skin. Watery blood gets all over his fingers but he doesn't even seem to notice. "Look!" He cries, brandishing his catch. It's big enough that he needs to use both hands to keep it from flopping all over the place, an ungainly stretch of flesh and bone. An adult's arm is so much bigger than a kid's, after all.

Ed has to force himself to speak. "Put it back."

Al makes a disappointed face at him. "It's funny," he says.

"No, it's not."

Al does this deep, whole-body sigh, rolling his eyes like he can't believe how lame his big brother is. "It's funnier in Xingese," he says, playing with the twitching fingers of Ed's grown arm like he would a stray cat's whiskers. "I guess it doesn't translate well."

Ed looks away, swallowing nausea, and when he looks back he finds himself in a new dream. A dark space, vague enough that it's impossible to tell if it's a single cramped room or an open field beneath a starless night sky. He can find the dim suggestion of his own hands—both flesh, he thinks, though who's to say for sure—by a dulled orange glow. A single candle. A lantern. A campfire. A bonfire. A wildfire. Something too big to ignore, too big to fight, too big to survive. He warms his hands by it with a sigh so tired it sounds drawn out of his marrow. He'd transmuted his fingertips sharp enough to practically claw their rations open, spilling it into a pot he'd transmuted too. The joy of traveling light by necessity. He thinks of Captain Buccaneer's giant diamond-tipped fingers and scoffs to himself.

"Beans're good for you," Darius says, misinterpreting. "Lotsa iron in 'em."

Ed glares across the fire. He's spent too many nights on the run with these three men—three and a half, when he's feeling indulgent. Three other bodies, a parasitic homunculus, and however many Xerxesian souls that made up the Philosopher's Stone of Greed's heart. To this day he wonders if there would have been any use in trying to speak to them directly. If he'd quit badgering Ling to come out to play and called out to those poor bastards instead? Would it have changed anything? Could he have salvaged even one of them from Greed or Father's grasp? 

Al had had the same thought too, after everything. He hadn't said as much to Ed before they parted ways, but he'd done his homework and legwork up and down Xing, dug through libraries and private collections, reading every scrap their good-for-nothing old man had personally written down. Al did the research, and came up with an inconclusive at his most optimistic. Ed trusts Al implicitly—

_—a woman's voice, hard to hear over metal instruments clattering against themselves, "We can expect results by this evening—"_

—and if Al says an idea's no good, then it's no good.

So, Ed scoffs again. "Fifth night in a row," he complains. "I'm fuckin' _sick_ of beans."

Heinkel grunts on his left. "So we'll steal something else the next time we hit up a town."

"S'not me stealin' shit," he protests, but it's half-hearted. 

"That's 'cuz it's your ugly mug on the wanted posters nine times out of ten," Greed points out, flashing his predator's grin.

They all laugh at his expense. He sneers back, more irritated by how his picture is drawn on the wanted posters than by the whole _wanted for treason_ thing. He's not that mean-looking, is he? If he asked Greed the dirty bastard would say _yes_ and follow it up with some sleazy joke. Ling would give him an honest answer, after he got done with some flirty teasing of his own. Two halves of a whole idiot, those weirdos. Still. It's been a while since Ling's been out, hasn't it? 

How long have they been on the run now anyway?

 _Snap._ The fire shifts, one log collapsing beneath the weight of another. Embers scatter into the smothering darkness above them, a jar of fireflies released all at once.

 _Snap._ The fire shifts, and he's watching Mustang absently burn a missive over the metal wastebasket he keeps by his desk for just this reason. The curtains are drawn, the lights are off. The flicker and flash of alchemy in a dark room stings to look at directly. "Pay attention, Fullmetal," Mustang drawls, amusement brightening his ink-dark eyes. On the desk is a stack of papers three inches thick that needs to be burned before they can leave. "You might just learn something."

 _Snap._ The fire shifts, darkness peeling back to a blaze of eye-wateringly lit concrete, as bright as the day it was poured. A horde of slavering mannequins has surrounded their camp, outnumbering them ten to one. Ed's the one who sealed the exits, alchemy still crackling at his fingertips as he readies a spear. Better they take these things down rather than risk them getting out into the streets. But they're losing. These things don't feel pain no matter how many of their bones he breaks. There are so many of them and the clock is ticking down. They're running out of time.

 _Snap._ The fire shifts, hissing in a spring storm. Raindrops ping off of metal, armor and automail. Pieces of both scatter like hail. Scar made shrapnel of them with hardly any effort. Ed can't win now, not with only one arm. The only way Al survives today is if he bows his head and lets Scar kill him. The embers of Al’s eyes blaze from the shadowed alleyway Scar broke him in. Al screaming his name is going to be the last thing Ed ever hears.

He shuts his eyes so he doesn't have to watch Scar bear down on him, and then the rain stops, and then there's the tell-tale _clack-clack-clacking_ of a train hurtling down the tracks to destinations unknown.

Ed opens his eyes.

He's sitting in a well-lit passenger car, the other occupants dull suggestions of shapes and conversations without discernible words. He doesn't know where he was or where he's going. It's dark outside, his own tired reflection all he can see in the window; a grown man two days overdue for a shave, hair that falls halfway down to his hips when he lets it down, broad of shoulder and trim of waist, a touch shorter than he hoped to turn out (not that he'd ever admit that). His hands, lap, and every spare inch of seat his ass isn't occupying is full of paperwork. He's got... something? Due the moment he arrives... wherever it is he's going. A report for Mustang. Letters for Winry and Al. A new draft for his publicist. A story to share with the kids. All of them, none of them, something else entirely? There’ll be hell to pay if it isn't ready when the train stops. It shouldn't be a big deal, not for him. He's a pro at improv at this point. But the thing is—

_—he's shaking, the snows of the North, the sauna of the South, ice and sweat and steam, the hands holding him down may as well be brands to burn him with—_

—he can't for the life of him figure out _what_ he's supposed to be working on.

The more he tries to read all these papers the more the words muddle to gibberish before his eyes. Here—this page has to be in Cretan, he's sure of it. All the arrays look Cretan, but when he tries to focus on the notes squeezed around each circle it all falls apart to an illegible scrawl. It's like he's trying to learn how to write left-handed again, but now he's drunk on top of it. He squints and angles the pages sideways and suddenly it's Drachman, which just pisses him off more. Cretan he can read great but his Drachman's practically all verbal. He may as well be trying to make sense of Xingese—and hey guess what! _This_ whole damn stack is in nothing but Xingese. Okay, fine, whatever, maybe this journal will be of some use? Nope, just page after page of Xerxesian right-to-left squiggles, with nary a short vowel in sight.

He's running out of time. He can do this, whatever _this_ is that needs doing, he just needs a solid foundation to work with. Same as whenever he gets his hands on an alchemist's private notes. One translation, one logical jump. A recipe for orange meringue, through a half-dozen mental backflips and two dozen reference checks, becomes a carefully encoded description to a particular illustration from the _Splendor Solis,_ and the triple-headed dragon is both itself a reference to the making of gold, which is a poetic way on either side of the Desert to mean immortality, and so a meringue becomes a stepping stone to the Philosopher's Stone, and so on.

He wants to throw the whole mess out the window at this point, but he _needs_ to finish this. He knows Al would be able to untangle this translator's circle jerk inside of five minutes, but that'd be a concession his pride couldn't allow. This is _easy_ stuff, god damn it. He takes a deep breath, lets it out slow. He shakes the tension from his hands, rolls it out of his neck and shoulders. The right takes twice as much cajoling as the left, the ungrateful prick. He's fine. He's got this. No need to bug Al. 

He watches Al for a moment, sleeping so deeply in the seat across from him that even all the swearing Ed's been doing under his breath hasn't roused him. No way is Ed going to be the one to wake him up without a real reason to, no matter how many years it’s been since the armor.

He throws his pen aside to scrub the exhaustion from his eyes. When he opens again the train and all his paperwork is gone as if it never existed. He flounders in a hard plastic seat for a moment, trying to make sense of the room his dreams have dumped him in this time. White vinyl floors, undecorated white walls, two dozen plastic chairs in slightly skewed rows, tired shapes in white uniforms bustling to and fro. A hospital waiting room. What's he waiting for? For Winry, of course. she went into labor hours ago, and all there is to do now is wait. But why is he out here? Spouses are typically allowed in the delivery room, and he was there holding her hand and apologizing a mile a minute to her for Maes and Nina's births. So why isn't he there now? A complication. Must've been. Yeah, he remembers now, in that funny hiccuping pattern of non-events in dreams. Something went wrong. Nothing _bad-_ bad, but serious enough he'd been asked to step outside.

Okay. 

He's been out here a while now, hasn't he? Waiting for the all-clear to rush back to her side. Any minute now they'll wave him back through the double doors to get scrubbed down and scrubbed up again. Sidi's face will be mostly hidden by a mask but it will be easy to hear the reassuring smile in the other man's voice—

_"—you got him here in time—"_

Right.

Weird though, how empty the waiting room is of other patients. There ought to be a handful of others regardless of the time, right? Rush Valley has more surgeons than it knows what to do with, but if it's not an outfitting the safe bet is either the teaching hospital at BVU or one of three family clinics. He knows this isn't the Brahims' clinic—too big and unfriendly—but he's not sure where else it could be. Wherever he is it ought to be bustling with cold and flu sufferers, folks not keen on their neighbors doing the stitching they might need after an accident, and others with any number of embarrassing or serious health issues. Apart from a few nurses that don't seem inclined to give him the time of day though, it's dead quiet. Something about that sets his teeth on edge. 

_Tick, tick, tick,_ goes the clock behind the intake desk, obnoxiously loud. He wants to take it off the wall and smash it to pieces for some peace and quiet. He settles on breathing. In and out, nice and slow, like Izumi taught them years and years ago.

The double doors swing open. It's not Sidi, like he expected. It's not a nurse either. Ed almost doesn't recognize the man swathed head to foot in surgical scrubs, but there's something about the nervous way he adjusts his glasses that Ed won’t ever drive out of his memory.

"It'll be a little while longer, I'm afraid," Shou Tucker says. His voice is blandly apologetic in sharp contrast to his blood-splattered smock.

A red pool begins to seep out from under the double doors, unmistakable and ghoulish. Too much, too fast. Whoever is bleeding on the other side will surely die in a matter of minutes without help. Dread and terror force Ed to his feet. He did this to Winry. _He did this._ He feels sick. "A-are you sure I can't see her?"

Shou Tucker’s mask vanishes in the easy glide of dream logic so he can give Ed a wide, wide smile. His teeth and glasses shine in the harsh overhead light. "There's no need to worry, Edward. They're both going to be just fine once I've finished with them."

Al's the one to rush the man while Ed's still trying to process the full meaning of that terrible promise. Al's the one to throw all his weight into a punch that leaves Shou Tucker spitting teeth.

Ed blinks, more surprised than grateful, and the dream loses traction once again. All the lights go out. The air turns humid, gaining a stomach-churning coppery rink. His hair and clothes cling to his sweat-slicked skin. The ground grows spongy underfoot. A thick, warm fluid soaks him from the knees down. He stumbles to an exhausted halt, thoroughly sick of the runaround his sleeping brain is putting him through. 

Here again, huh?

He squints into the expansive dark, hoping that this time, surely this time, there will be something out there beyond crumbling stone walls and old bones. No such luck. Then again, he wasn't hoping real hard. This is a place of disappointment.

He adjusts his grip on a torch fashioned out of a bit of old fence post and Mustang's useless attack, more out of habit than strain. It's only the muscles in his back that get pissy if he keeps his automail arm up for too long, and he's used to pushing through that particular burn. Still, the sound of steel fingers sliding along rough wood is comforting, in its own way. Grounding. A reminder that there are other things out there beyond this blood and darkness, if only he can find a way to wake up. This is the last torch he's got though, and it's already burning low. He's running out of time. 

The thought of having to slog his way through the endless waste of Gluttony's stomach in _absolute_ darkness, _alone,_ makes his lungs squeeze so hard he can hardly breathe.

 _"Ling?"_ He has to cough after calling out, a raucously dry heaving of sound. His voice is rusty with disuse, and overuse before that. He'd shouted himself hoarse when he'd first woken up here, certain the idiot prince had ended up in here too. That had been a while ago though. Hours, certainly. Less than a day, surely.

It couldn’t have been a whole day already, right?

_"LING!"_

There's nothing for his voice to echo off here. Dead in the water. Well, _blood_ to be more accurate. Damn, but he is _sick_ of the smell of it. First thing he's doing once he gets out of here is bolting for the nearest shower to boil himself clean. Then, _food._ He's so hungry his stomach quit making dying animal noises and just _gnaws_ now. He wants a steak the size of his head. A mountain of garlic potatoes. Broccoli so Al won't sigh huffily at him. The whole mess slathered in an unconscionable amount of butter and a liter of water to wash it all down with. If that's not motivating he doesn't know what is.

Something pops underfoot and he stumbles. Too tired to catch himself, too tired to swear, he ends up kneeling hip-deep in blood. Only reflex and an arm that can't get tired keep the torch from getting snuffed out.

He breathes.

He's so damn _tired._ It's the same no matter what direction he walks. No hills, no valleys. No walls, no doors. Just an endless sea of blood with the odd moldering ruin. He has to get out of here. He's starting to think there isn't a way out at all.

"Oh," Al says quietly.

There's hulking steel in Ed's peripheral, flickering orange in the torchlight where it isn't splattered black and red. But when he looks directly Al's just a kid, baby-faced and up to his thighs in blood, looking just as confused as Ed is that he's suddenly here too.

"You never said it looked like this," Al says. Only his voice is right. Low and warm with humor at Ed's expense, exactly as it should be.

Ed snorts, too tired to laugh properly. "Said it sucked, didn't I?"

Al hums. "Probably. I never could get a straight answer out of you about it. Ling only ever talks about the shoe thing when I ask him." He holds out his hands, offering to help. Ed grimaces. He doesn't know which Al's the real one, if he'll manage to grab anything at all if he reaches out.

He reaches out anyway, and doesn't miss. Dreams are funny like that.

Al braces him as best he can, young as he appears. Pats Ed's elbow once he's upright, gives him in an exasperated little smile. It's twice the motivation to keep going than any imagined gourmet meal.

Ed has to keep moving. He can't afford another breather. If he stops he's honestly not sure he'll have the strength to start up again, which happens to be _bullshit_ thinking of the highest degree, so. One foot in front of the other, same as he's been going for hours and hours now. Less than a day, _surely,_ but each step brings him closer to crossing that line too. It doesn't matter. He can rest once he's _out._

"Tell you what," he says over his shoulder. "I'll fill you in on every stupid, gross minute of this shithole once I'm outta here, alright?"

Al follows him after a moment's hesitation; the heavy tread of the armor slowly filling up to the mid-calf with blood, a child struggling to wade through a sea of warm gore. "You already did, though. This was years ago."

He scoffs. "This is a dream. Only way out is to wake up."

"Sounds like you know what to do then."

"Sure I do. Always do. Just haven't figured out the trick to waking up when I want to yet, s'all."

"Huh. I've always had the opposite problem."

And that's them all over, isn't it? If it's not one problem it's another, and together they always seem to end up knee-deep in bullshit. Case in point: right fucking now. 

Ed just grunts. He's got to put all his focus on breathing steady, his footsteps sure. Al takes his cue and follows him silently. He gets it, same as he always does. Al stays now in the dream for all that he couldn't when this was real. He's a sure, reaffirming presence at Ed's side—

_—afternoon sunlight through vertical blinds, beeping machinery, something caught on his wrist, he can't move, agony burning curlicues under his skin, he can't MOVE—_

Ed cries out, falling again. Al cries out too, startled rather than hurting as he is. This time the torch does slip from his metal hand, falling into the blood with a furious hiss. Darkness drowns them.

“Fuck,” Ed gasps. _“Fuck—”_

Splashing, frantic and loud. He's pushed, then grabbed. Al's voice in his ear. "It's okay. You're okay. None of this is real—"

Said the dream to the dreamer. He hates the nightmares his brain cooks up when it's feeling frisky. After all the glucose and laboriously fun science he's fed it this is the thanks he gets? Ungrateful shit.

"I'm tired." The words are plucked out of him with brisk disinterest, no input from him permitted. Like laundry hung out to dry, truth is spooled out of him to hang in a stiff breeze. "I don't know how to get out. I can't. Not like I did the first time. I'm alone—"

"No, you're not—"

"I'm _alone,"_ Ed repeats harshly. "Ling's—gone. Didn't end up here, I guess. Doesn't matter. Envy's definitely not here or he woulda shown by now. That's how this one's s'posed to end. Between his teeth. That's when I always wake up—"

Al makes a small, wounded noise. 

"There's no way out. Maybe there never was. Maybe it's better. Maybe I deserve—"

"Oh, _fuck_ that."

Ed blinks into the darkness.

Al makes this huge, aggrieved sigh at him. "You're an idiot, Ed. I can't believe I forgot that for a minute. The door's _right_ there."

And it is.

Just like that, the way out is only a few meters away, visible despite the crushing black on all sides. He'd recognize that door anywhere. Green-painted wood boards, scuffed and peeling at the corner where he's kicked it open so many times Winry and Granny have given up trying to browbeat some manners into him. It's home, or the closest to it's he's seen—

_—latex gloves probing his face, a man's voice speaking with clinical calm, "Keep an eye on his blood pressure through the night—"_

Ed turns to thank Al and finds only darkness. Obviously. But at the same time it seems emptier than it was a second ago. "Alphonse?'

Nothing.

Well. That makes sense, doesn't it? He was alone before. He's always alone in this dream. So what if the ending's changed for once?

He hauls himself to his feet. Staggers once, twice. Falls again. Hauls himself upright again. Eventually hauls himself up the familiar porch stairs. His right hand is his, really _his,_ a thing of flesh and bone and blood, when he reaches for the handle.

Light blinds him, but that's alright. He'd rather blink away stars than stay trapped here in the dark belly of some dead monster. He pushes on. When he can see again he's somewhere else, somewhere unfamiliar but _home_ all the same, yet also a place only humoring the consideration to indulge his human sensibilities into looking like somewhere real.

The sky is ink-dark for all that everything beneath it is drenched in sunlight warm as honey, practically dripping starlight, a gauzy streak cutting through the infinite nothing of the universe. Ed's never seen so many stars before, twinkling in iridescent constellations that change shape when he tries to focus on them. Mountains jut impossibly tall in the distance, in ranges that twist and cut through themselves like they're being braided together to form a firmer whole. The undulating foothills are swathed in green, trees triple the height of any forest he's ever seen. Endless fields stretch to the crooked horizon, and it must be the cusp of summer to explain the sheer _riot_ of colors everywhere he looks. There are more wildflowers than he's ever seen before, more species than he could ever hope to name, surely none of which could be found in the waking world.

Dreams are funny things. Enough horrors to make him want to quit sleeping for keeps if he could, and then something as awesome as this comes along to make up for it all. It's really amazing what the human mind is capable of.

It's raining despite the clear sky and afternoon sunlight filling the valley. Ed can hear it plinking off of armor and automail, but when he looks over Al's grown and whole and laughing, exactly as he should be, and when he looks down at himself he's got ten fingers cradling an obnoxiously red cocktail and ten toes digging into the wet earth. Al's barefoot too, dressed like he's several hours into a party where it's okay to cut loose and have some real fun for once. Tie gone, vest and the first three buttons of his shirt undone, sleeves rolled up, hair a disaster. He's trying to keep his own obnoxiously red cocktail covered from the rain with one hand, but he's laughing so hard he's sure to spill it all anyway.

"I get it," Al wheezes, hard to hear over a sudden brassy swell of music. There's a big white tent nearby, draped in fairy lights, dancing shadows thrown large against the treated canvas. People cheer inside, shouting in an effort to be heard over their own joy. There's a hell of a party going on they need to get back to, but Al had pulled him outside to talk because—

_—erratic beeping, plastic tubing smacking against metal, heat and hands, a rusted beam through his guts, a voice speaking with exhausted urgency, “—seizing again, mind his shoulder—”_

"What?" Ed asks once the music's settled back down to a dull roar.

Al grins at him. "It's so obvious. I can't believe we didn't put it together before."

At once Ed knows he's talking about their theory, the one they still haven't agreed on a name for. They shorthand it to _10/11_ in writing, generally stick to _The Theory_ verbally, though they're both prone to tacking on a nasty adjective in either format if they're feeling pissed off about another dead end. He grins right back. Trust Al to have a lightbulb moment after a few drinks. Ed only ever gets happy and tactile when he's creeping past tipsy, like now. He just wants to ruffle Al's hair and maybe shove him in a creek for that crack about his cooking earlier. Ed's a _great_ cook, damn it.

"We're so stupid," Al says.

"We're drunk," Ed corrects.

"Drink _ing,"_ Al turns back on him with delighted emphasis. "Present tense."

"Don't make _grammar jokes_ at me. C'mon, spill it. What d'you got?"

"I got that we're stupid," Al says, and the little shit dissolves into laughter again. Ed, a paragon of self-restraint and infinite patience, chooses to wait him out. God _damn,_ but this drink is tart. It's like getting punched in the mouth with a lemon.

Al apologizes once he's got his giggles on a leash again, and Ed makes a show of rolling his eyes before shoving him companionably. "No, you're not."

"No," Al admits, insufferably, "I'm really not."

"Ugh, whatever. You thought of something, didn't you? A way to reliably bypass equi—"

Al waves his hand, joints loosened by whatever they’re drinking. "Later."

"But—"

"It can wait." Al tosses the rest of his drink back, screws his face up at the taste, and sets the glass aside. "Really, Ed. We're supposed to be having fun right now, aren't we?"

The party is important, sure, and people will get huffy if they stay gone too long, but they can afford to talk shop for a few minutes more, can't they?

Al claps a hand on his shoulder. Ed rarely feels anything in his dreams, not really, but he knows with that inexplicable certainty of dream logic that it doesn't hurt, and in fact his shoulder has never hurt. Neither of them have ever been ground under the heel of something stark and terrible for missing Mom too much. They are both without pain, and time has sandpapered their grief into a tolerable shape. Something to roll in their hands on nights of quiet contemplation, playing games of _do you remember_ that no longer bite hard enough to draw blood. "Go on," Al says. "You still owe Winry a dance."

"What about you?"

"I'll get the next one." He takes Ed's half-finished drink and tosses it back too.

Ed smiles at him, fond, and clambers a little unsteadily to his feet. Mud squishes between all ten toes, shockingly cold against imagined skin. There's no nearby creek, unfortunately, but he does take the opportunity to catch his balance on Al's head, messing his rain-damp hair into a ridiculous dandelion burst of frizz. Al just laughs, shoving him away.

As he turns to rejoin the party the rain picks up, drumming against the tent, armor, automail, all. Somebody shrieks something about a cake. Somebody else laughs. He ducks under the dripping entry flap and the dream dissolves once more. Colors and sounds become murky, nonsensical. Edges fray. The plot jumps ship. He wakes up at last, not completely, just enough to fully realize he's been sleeping. He doesn't surface any higher than a twilight fugue, awareness beyond himself an inconsequential thing. He knows he's lying on his back, that he's cold and a little sweaty, that there are machines beeping and hissing steadily nearby, that there’s something in his mouth, on his face. He knows he's so tired he's already slipping back under.

A door opens. Low voices murmur. A door closes.

Ed doesn't dream again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. We've hit the hospital part of this thing. If you have an ounce of medical training: I know. I did my best. Some handwavium is intentional.  
> 2\. Arakawa's method of naming bit characters after wine? A+  
> 3\. The automail capital of Amestris has a university with a training hospital because I said so. It's named for the three Italian engineers who all had a hand in inventing piezoelectric bone surgery in the 80s.  
> 4\. The ultracentrifuge was built by Swedish chemist Theodor Svedberg, which netted him the 1926 Nobel Prize. Ed needed a hobby.  
> 5\. I have no idea how to write kids.  
> 6\. Some shower canoodling and casual nudity, nothing explicit.

* * *

Pain is what wakes Ed up next. Not the excruciating waves of fire and knives he dimly recalls from before, however long ago that was. He's _sore_ all over, enough that shifting in his sleep has woken up a fresh laundry list of aches and pains. Even his _scalp_ hurts. Ugh.

Not eager to piss off his neck any more than it already is, Ed makes do by looking around with his eyes alone. This... isn't their bedroom? Not the operating room or any of the rehab rooms either. White walls without decoration, cheap vertical blinds instead of curtains, the closed door the wrong color entirely. A touch of gray morning light creeps in through the blinds, which at least explains why it's so quiet. There's only the beeping on his left, coming from the bedside monitor barely seen in his peripheral. An uncomfortable tugging on his wrist no doubt connects to the IV stand beside it, from which two nearly emptied bags hang. There's a steady whooshing on his right, corresponding with the rise and fall of his chest. That one explains the heap of clear plastic and thick blue tubing over his face, heavy on his tongue, filling his throat.

A hospital, he realizes with a dull and sluggish lack of surprise. He's in a hospital.

Now that he's _acutely_ aware of the ventilator he has to mentally stomp on his body's instinctive urge to gag. He forces his muscles to relax, wincing as they loudly announce their myriad complaints. He starts running through the periodic table backward to get his mind focused on anything else. _Relax._ Let it do its job. Obviously somebody with a hell of a lot more medical know-how than him figures he needs it. Winry, probably.

Huh. It's easier to calm down than he expected it to be. For all that he holds the dubious achievement of most hospital stays in his circle of friends and peers by a (literal) landslide, he's never been fucked up enough to need a ventilator before. One of those drips must be something to keep him under, if the way his eyelids are already beginning to droop again means anything.

Well. Who is he to argue with chemistry?

* * *

He's not alone the next time he wakes. It's the businesslike clatter of somebody fussing with something at the foot of his bed that draws him out of the sucking murk of drugged sleep. He has to take a moment to blink the fug from his eyes, and another to remember not to panic about the enormous fucking tube down his throat. He must visibly twitch despite his best efforts because he blinks and there's a gentle touch on his right hand. A masked face, framed by red hair receding to silver, hovers above his. He experiences a brief moment of total disorientation, wondering why the fuck the only decent bookseller in town would be waiting at his bedside, before he remembers that Vi has a younger sister who happens to be a nurse.

"Easy, lad, easy now," Oseleta urges soothingly. "Let the machine breathe for you. Easy now, Edward, in... and out... and in...."

With her aid he calms rather than chokes on the damn ventilator. He squeezes her gloved hand in lieu of being able to thank her properly. The crow's feet at her eyes crinkle as she squeezes back.

"There's a good lad. Now, I'm going to run through a few questions with you if that's acceptable? All right. Blink once for no, twice for yes. Understand?"

He blinks accordingly. It's in this way that he learns he's in the ICU at BVU's training hospital, that he's been here for three days, that Winry brought him in late Tuesday night nearly non-responsive after a convulsion enroute, that there were marked complications but he's on the mend now, and most important of all: Winry and the kids are safe. They've exhibited not a one of his symptoms thus far. After all that she runs him through a truncated neurological exam; simple tests that don't require him to speak, though he's sure that's to come later. It's hard to tell how well or how poorly he does, though even he can tell he's not firing on all cylinders. His hands feel weird, tingly and reluctant to cooperate in a way not unlike his shoulder and stump act when he's overworked them. 

Ah, well. He can only move up from here, right?

Oseleta steps back from his bed once she's satisfied, a happy crinkle still touching her eyes. "Now, I bet you're eager to get that tube out of your throat, but let's leave the final word on that to your doctor, eh? I'll go fetch him, and call your wife while I'm at it."

He blinks gratefully. It's all he can do, in his state.

She leaves the door cracked when she leaves, allowing the familiar bustling chaos of a full-fledged hospital to seep into his room. He doesn't mind. There's something calming in the low cajoling of nurses catching each other's attentions, something comfortable in the jargon one finds in a place of healing. It's only once he's alone that the double whammy of embarrassment for being laid out in fucking _critical care_ and guilt for no doubt scaring Winry half out of her gourd hits him. God damn it. Now that he's not sort of almost dying, she's definitely going to kill him.

What the hell even _happened?_

Mentally he plays back the day or so before hours of persistent nausea turned into a full-blown sprint for the bathroom, trying to drum up anything he might have eaten or done that could have caused this. He'd gone to the lab for a couple hours, sure, but he'd gotten sidetracked arguing with that wall-eyed dumbfuck Johanniter again, so he hadn't even gotten any real work done. Even if he had, he hasn't stepped foot inside the chem department since, what? March? _Maybe_ early April? He's been too busy trying to design a sturdier centrifuge since the department head had all but begged him to take pity on the one machine he hadn't destroyed yet. Al's taken to calling his pet project his attempt at building a better mousetrap because he thinks "ultracentrifuge" is a dumb name. It's _obvious,_ thank you, and the dunderheads he's forced to share lab space with wouldn't know their asses from their elbows if he took the time to label them. It's a good name, damn it.

Which... is not the point, currently. Right. Yeah. Figuring out what the fuck landed him in the hospital in the first place is. That's what he really should be focusing on....

Despite his best efforts he drifts off again. Ah, well.

* * *

There are people speaking quietly nearby. He's blinking at them before he realizes, exactly, that he's awake and on the cusp of interacting with others again. Oseleta's the first to notice, breaking off mid-sentence to step away from the window to hover by his bedside again, reassuring and reminding him to relax and let the ventilator do what's needed. Sidi approaches on his other side more sedately, nodding in lieu of the usual easy grin Ed's accustomed to. A third person joins Sidi, an unfamiliar man with pale skin and salt and pepper hair curling around his large ears.

"Good morning," Sidi says, his made for radio voice warmed further by genuine gladness to see Ed awake. 

Ed raises his right hand up off the bed, wincing when his whole arm barks _what the fuck_ at him, but follows through with two fingers tapped clumsily to his brow. Sidi chuckles and returns the gesture; an old joke between a former Army doc and a dog of the military. 

Ed drops his elbow back to the bed before his shoulder can start bitching at him properly, waving his hand at the unfamiliar man.

"Doctor Caladoc," the man offers with an amicable nod. "I'm the director here at Bianchetti-Vercellotti's ICU. Ostensibly, I'm the one signing off on anything Doctor Brahim claims needs doing." 

His tone is one of dry amusement rather than justified indignation. It's telling of how unusual a city Rush Valley really is. Every doctor owes another some sort of favor, every mechanic has bribed their way into borrowing another mechanic's clinic for one reason or another, and anyone who has any sway in either realm is wizard enough to nudge the rest of the local culture along to their whims. Any place else this kind of 'thumb in every pie' mindset would stem from political corruption. And sure, that's still a problem here; people are people wherever you go, for good or for ill. But when one of the most respected names in automail asks a favor here in Rush Valley, well, people listen. Winry's not usually the type to take advantage of her own fame, but if it gets her what she really needs? Well, there's no wondering at all to find Sidi here in BVU rather than his own clinic and all the local staff considerate enough to accommodate, now is there?

Dr. Caladoc goes on for a bit, as is his right as director. There's nothing that surprises Ed; just a clinical interest in his unusually severe case of food poisoning. There's idle consideration of it being, say, cholera instead, but there have been enough eyes on him and tests done while he's been halfway comatose that they've more or less ruled that out. They've settled on a particularly eager strain of bacterial gastroenteritis as the cause of what landed him here, though naturally they're double checking themselves and his house, just in case. Considering a healthy man in the under 30 club ended up catapulted into intensive care, it's only right they take precautions. 

The good doctor is interrupted by a frazzled-looking nurse ducking his head in through the door. "Doctor Caladoc?"

"Yes, yes." His tone is aggrieved, though his body language remains unhurried. He dips his head in a polite apology to Ed, gives Sidi a meaningful look as he raps his knuckles against the clipboard in his hand, and swans out after the nurse. Ed pays it no mind.

Sidi and Oseleta give him their full attention after that, which is something of a mixed blessing. Lucky him, at least; they've been weaning him off the ventilator while he's been in and out, so they can jump right into getting him off it for good now that he's readily conscious for it. There are several minutes of truly impressive discomfort and indignity he's a little bit relieved to not have Winry here to witness. Once the worst of the built-up gunk has been suctioned away he's given the barest amount of ice chips to suck on before an oxygen mask is slapped onto his face. Then Sidi runs him through a full neurological exam that he passes with middling success; his hands and foot are obviously reluctant to cooperate, his tongue's about as useful as a wad of old chewing gum, and the less said about the state of his voice the better. Hopefully the worst of it all will clear up by the time they're ready to discharge him. He'd scare the kids right out of the hospital if Winry brought them for a visit today.

Sidi keeps an almost obnoxiously professional air in front of Oseleta. If they were back in the Brahim clinic Sidi'd be calling him a goddamn irresponsible moron and telling him to mind what he pours down his gullet. Frankly, Ed prefers a firm dressing down to meaningless platitudes, but he understands the pretense here. He's just happy to have a familiar face in all of this until Winry comes around for a visit.

By the end of it all Ed's fucking exhausted. All he wants is a cough drop, a glass of water, and the opportunity to curl up in his own significantly more comfortable bed, but those are all probably a few more days off still. They leave him to rest readily enough however, and he's so wrung out he has hardly any time to wonder again at the cause of the worst food poisoning of his life before sleep drags him under again.

* * *

The good news: The next time he wakes up Winry's there, and the world makes sense again.

The bad news: The second she realizes he's awake Winry's eyes do that particular little spasm that means she's about two seconds away from either bursting into tears or tearing him a new asshole, and it's 100% on him to hammer out which way she teeters.

"Heya, sexy," he croaks. "Come here often?"

That earns him incredulous laughter, an aborted move to swat his arm, and best of all, "You unbelievable _moron."_

He tries to give her his best shit-eating grin, but the stupid oxygen mask gets in the way. He thinks it still comes across well enough though, because she grabs his right hand in a stranglehold like she'd prefer to be squeezing his neck. It's the little victories.

"Sorry," he says.

What little cheer he's mustered in her goes out like a candle. She slumps over him, breath catching on the cusp of a proper sob. "You—" She breathes, steeling herself. _"You scared me."_

"I know. I'm sorry."

She does smack him then. On his hip, far too gentle to be more than a pat with aspirations of violence. _"Idiot._ What's _sorry_ ever been good for?"

He hates when she's right. He hates how _often_ she's right more. But what else is there to say? He squeezes her hands, glad the oxygen mask is likely hiding his grimace. He's still so _sore._ Maybe that's the right thing he can do; the only thing, maybe. Winry doesn't start properly crying, at least, which is what he's trying to avoid. So instead of more useless apologies he asks, "How're the hellions?"

She's wearing a face mask and latex gloves, likely because the docs still don't feel 100% comfortable saying whatever landed him here isn't contractible. The mask makes it difficult to tell whether the huff she gives him is amused, exasperated, or simply tired. "They're okay. I didn't want to bring them until you were feeling a little stronger."

That's fine with him. Nina would probably find the whole experience of visiting him in the hospital pretty cool, but Maes is an anxious kid by default. No way does he want Maes seeing him hooked up to a half dozen machines if he can help it. "Pan watchin' 'em?"

"Yeah. They've been staying at her apartment, for the most part. Doctor Brahim thinks it should be alright to let them come home tonight, but...."

There's a waver in her voice, a hesitation she's trying not to show. He's had a few hours of solid enough consciousness here and there to lay back and wrack his brains, trying to remember the events that landed him here. There's a dreamlike quality to what little he's been able to peace together. He doesn't like what little he can remember. "I scared 'em. Didn't I."

She doesn't bother denying it. She just squeezes his hand again, her eyes squeezing too. "I didn't—" Her mask puffs again in a shaky exhale. "I should've realized it was something serious."

"H-hey, no, don't start with that. I didn't think it was serious either—"

"You're not exactly welling over with medical expertise," she retorts, a horrible dampness creeping into her voice.

"And you're hardly qualified to diagnose—"

Ah, hell. That was too close to a shout for his throat to handle yet. He ends up breaking off to cough like a foghorn, unable to reasonably point out that a combination automail surgeon/mechanic is simply not going to have the training or experience to differentiate between a regular miserable bout of food poisoning and the kind of food poisoning that's going to demand some time in a hospital. He knows she knows that, objectively, but guilt is a nasty infection that's hard to burn out. Ask him how he knows.

Winry's hands are on him at once, helping him sit up, removing his oxygen mask so he can sip blissfully cool water until he can wrestle his respiratory system under control again. She adjusts his bed while she's at it so he can sit up a bit, which he appreciates for all that he's not quite ready to speak and say as much. He stays still as she repositions his mask, smoothing the elastic. Its rounded plastic edges scrape against nearly a week's worth of scruff, uncomfortably itchy. Winry's eyes are dulled by worry, bruised by exhaustion. There's a fine tremor to her hands as she smoothes his bangs out of his face.

"It's—" He swallows a warning tickle, forcing the words out. "I'm gonna be fine. You've been talking to the docs too. I'll be home before you know it."

"We don't know what _caused_ this. Or if there will be any long-term—"

He reaches out to squeeze her hand again, relieved when that's enough to keep her from finishing that sentence. He'll worry about _long-term_ once he's out of this damn bed. He grins at her and hopes it's a fraction as convincing as he needs it to be through the mask. "You know me. I can spring back from anything, so long as I got a pulse."

Her mask puffs. "I wish you'd stop trying to prove that." She almost sounds amused. The little victories.

"Ha. Me too." He's had more than his share of near-death experiences already, but just like all the ones that came before _this_ one he's got no intention of laying down and accepting it. As soon as he's got a clean bill of health—or nearest thing to it, anyway—he's going to go up and down the whole of Rush Valley with a fine tooth comb if that's what it takes to parse any kind of probable cause. He hadn't eaten out on his own in the days preceding his food poisoning, at least nothing he hadn't shared with somebody else. So it's got to be environmental, right? And if it cold-cocked him into the ICU there's no telling what it could do to somebody over 60, somebody pregnant like Winry, somebody with a heart condition, somebody fresh out of an outfitting, and on and on. It's not much of a plan, but if he's being generous with his definitions of one it's at least a solid step in the right direction.

Speaking of getting to his feet, now that he's at a 45-degree angle he's _acutely_ aware of the fact that he has no goddamn idea when the last time he pissed was, and now that the thought's occurred to him it's almost literally all he can think about. He wiggles his hand free of Winry's deathgrip and starts detangling himself from all the wires and tubes attached to him in a concentrated effort to avoid breaking his nose before he can take three steps.

"What are you doing?"

"Relax. I gotta pee, is all." Oh hell, he nudged his wrist wrong and is now appallingly aware of the IV jammed in there. _Ugh._ "I'll be two minutes, tops."

Winry springs up and around to the other side of the hospital bed to practically pin him down, the dirty cheat. She must have made sure the on-call nurses when he was admitted didn't go jamming anything into his right arm—awesome of her, as always—but it also means he can only get out of the left side of his bed if he doesn't want to turn himself into a human Slinky. "Oh no you don't. You're bedbound until me and at _least_ two other doctors say otherwise."

 _"Seriously?_ I'm not gonna use a—" Ugh, more coughing. It still sounds like he swallowed a bunch of cigarette butts on a dare, but at least it's a manageable amount of coughing. _"—augh._ I'm not gonna use a fuckin' _bedpan_ if I can help it."

There's something about knowing somebody your whole life that means, more often than not, that you just _know_ what expression they're making even if you can't see their face. The particular set of Winry's shoulders and the way she tosses her hair means she's at _least_ 60% too smug for a guy trapped in a hospital bed to have to deal with. "No need," she says, _far_ too cheerfully, and reaches near the end of the bed to pluck yet another plastic bag up by its metal hook. Clouded though its contents may be, there's no mistaking a bag of piss when it's brandished in your face.

He flops back in the bed, mindful of all the shit connected to him even as he groans piteously. Well, at least he knows why his _dick_ hurts as much as the rest of him.

"You only have one leg on right now anyway," Winry adds. She puts the piss bag back out of sight where it belongs to better thump the empty space where his automail ought to be. "Less stress on you," she explains.

"...And it means I can't wander off."

 _"And_ it means you can't wander off! Deal with it, Ed; you're not going anywhere 'til I say so."

Well. That's something to keep her occupied when visiting hours are over. His leg's been her personal guinea pig ever since he quit the military, and she's as bad as he is about retreating into a pet project whenever she's stressed. His leg's going to be rebuilt from the frame up by the time he's out of here.

They spend another half hour talking and catching up before his eyelids decide to betray him. He'll have to remember to tease her for trying to kiss him goodbye while they're both wearing stupid masks....

* * *

The next morning Winry's in his room barely a minute after visiting hours begin. 20 minutes after that she gets into an argument with Dr. Caladoc while Ed and Sidi run the whole gamut of incredulous eyebrow wrangling on the sidelines. An unrelated but happy development is that Ed's downgraded to a simple nasal cannula just before she leaves for an 11 o'clock appointment she couldn't reschedule, lunch, and to pick up the kids from Paninya to bring them back around for a short visit. Ed's chest hurts like somebody jumped on it boots-first, but he can breathe fine, honest. Some discomfort is worth having a less intimidating amount of plastic hooked up to his face.

...for the kids. Less intimidating for the kids.

The nasal cannula means he can eat his horrible hospital food easier, which is something of a mixed blessing. They may as well just hand him a straw instead of a spoon for the bland shit they're feeding him, but hey, he's not one to turn his nose up at calories. He needs to get his strength back ASAP and the only way he's getting out of here is if he can prove he's got a handle on his basic goddamn bodily functions again. 

After Winry leaves Oseleta comes by to change his bandages, of which he has two. He vaguely remembers being back in the operating room back home and an amount of blood smeared all over the sheets that wasn't distressing then but is in hindsight. He _knows_ better than to go yanking IVs out, what the fuck. He hopes the bruising makes his arm look worse than it is. Oseleta doesn't act like it's anything to worry over, but then again, she works the ICU in the automail capital of the world. Half the patients that have walked or wheeled themselves past Ed's room have had metal grafted somewhere obvious on them, and at least three of the staff that he's seen too. A sore vein's not worth batting an eye over in this town.

The other injury in need of fresh bandages is news to him though.

 _"Twenty_ stitches?" He echoes faintly.

Oseleta hums. "Your wife said you fell down the stairs, cut your head open on your knee. Lucky it didn't fracture your skull, from the sound of it."

He winces as she dabs his face with something that smells and feels like window cleaner. Great, just what he needed. _Another_ forehead scar. Ah, well.

* * *

Winry returns that afternoon as promised, a wide-eyed Maes and Nina in tow. Maes is clutching a small bouquet of yellow and white flowers, Nina the ugliest stuffed toy Ed's ever seen in his life. It's either a hedgehog or a partially skinned potato. It's holding a crudely stitched star that cheerfully demands anyone unfortunate enough to lay eyes on it to _GET WELL SOON!_

"You shouldn't have," Ed deadpans at Winry. She's definitely grinning behind her mask again, which he decides to ignore for the moment in favor of putting on the nicest smile he can muster. "Heya, kiddos."

"They're both curious in their approach, visibly uncomfortable in their own ill-fitting masks. Ed watches their eyes follow the trail of wires and tubes attached between him and the machines on both sides of his bed. He'd asked Oseleta to put the side rails on his bed down earlier, so it's easy to coax Nina to hop up onto the bed beside him. Maes, twice as cautious as her as always, edges into the nearest chair while Winry takes the flowers from him to arrange them in the vase on the nightstand.

Nina's the first of them to speak. "Here." She holds out the hedgehog. 

Ed makes a show of tucking it under the blankets on his left side, mostly so he won't have to look at the tragic thing any longer than he has to. "Thanks, bud. I love him."

"Her," she corrects, quietly.

"Oh, my bad. Did you give her a name yet?" A small shake of her head. "Do y'wanna?"

She nods, chewing on her thumbnail as she thinks. That's not something she's done since he got invited to some middlingly formal event in Central that had childcare in an adjacent corner of the officers club. 75 kids crammed together in a pool hall with a half dozen packs of crayons and unmonitored access to sugar had been a nightmare for everyone involved. She thinks about it long enough that Ed has the opportunity to give Maes a reassuring smile over her pigtails. It doesn't do anything to soothe the furrow between his eyebrows, but it does ease the fidgeting, at least. "Beatrice," Nina finally declares.

"Beatrice the hedgehog, huh? I like it."

"Porcupine," Winry corrects, like it actually friggin' matters. 

He rolls his eyes at her. "Porcupine, then. It's a great name for a porcupine." He gives Nina a little hug, which seems to be enough to get her to relax and curl against him. She's still warm from the summer heat. His hand tingles painfully when he strokes her hair but he doesn't mind at all.

"How're you two doin', huh? You bein' good for Auntie 'Ninya?"

Nina _mm-hmms._ Maes nods belatedly like he's not paying attention. He's not meeting Ed's eyes either, lingering higher. Ed couldn't have torn a stitch just _laying_ here, could he? It's covered by a big wad of gauze anyway. Is it the hospital that's got him on edge? There are always people in and out of the shop in varying states of recovery, though he and Winry are careful to keep the kids away from the worst of it. Maes started to help with things like restocking inventory, what, six months ago? But they agreed not to let him help clean bandages for another year or two. Is it seeing Ed laid out in a hospital bed that's got him so on edge? Nah, can't be. Winry swaps his leg out once a month on the minimum, and he gets banged up to some degree fixing something or sparring with Winry's customers all the time. Hell, the price of good automail is bruises, and—

And he frowns, ignoring the tug of stitches in his forehead. Something about that thought is familiar. Something about that thought... unsettles?

"They've been helping Paninya with some odd jobs around town," Winry says.

Right. Yeah.

He waggles his left hand at Maes, mindful of the tube in his wrist still pumping him full of fluids. "What’s Auntie 'Ninya had you doin' while I've been stuck here?"

"Inventory, mostly." Maes does a kind of whole-body grimace. "Are you dying?"

Ed—

—reels.

He meets Winry's eyes and finds the same sickly concern festering there, the same fear tangled up in them both so deeply there’s no point in trying to cut it loose. The outbreak of ‘04 had swept so quickly and so viciously through the countryside that a real diagnosis had evaded most village clinicians until long after it would have been of any use, Resembool included. He's about the same age she’d been, and they'd all been so damn _young_ that whatever memories they've hung onto of his mother’s last days can't be trusted. Ed can remember the fear that had all but drowned him; hours spent knocking shoulders with Al at her bedside. She was fine right up until she wasn't, and she only got worse from there. No temporary improvements, no momentary reliefs. She was there, and then she was bedbound, and then he and Al held her hand as she slipped away.

"No," he says, and more firmly, _"No._ I ate something that made me real sick, but I'm feeling much better now. Promise."

Maes doesn't look convinced, so Ed gives Nina another little hug—ignoring the pins and needles that race up his arm—then reaches over to ruffle Maes' hair. "Hey, I'm serious. Would I lie to you?"

Maes huffs, pulling away. "You lie all the time."

 _"Tch._ Do not."

"Do too! You say something different _every time_ somebody asks how you lost your leg!"

"Oh, c'mon, are you sayin' I lied about a shark biting it off? I've got pictures! And the friggin' _jaws_ of it are up on the corkboard—"

"You _also_ said Auntie 'Zumi cut it off when you were a kid, _and_ that it fell off 'cuz you didn't eat your vegetables, _and_ that you got blown up, _and_ that you got frostbite, _and_ that you played too close to the train tracks, _and—"_

He's biting his lip to keep from laughing outright. He can tell by the crinkle of Winry's eyes that she's trying not to laugh too. "All of that's true! Every one of 'em!"

"You can't lose the same body part more than once!"

"Sure you can! They grow back if you're lucky."

Maes is so indignant he's practically vibrating as he jabs a finger in Ed's face. _"That's_ a lie! Otherwise Mom wouldn't have a job!"

 _"Hey,_ what'd your Mom say about pointing? And _I_ said if you're _lucky,_ keep up."

Maes stops pointing, probably not because it's rude and more so he can throw his hands up as theatrically as possible. "What's that even _mean?"_

"It means that sometimes limbs can come back under _very_ specific parameters, which includes being good and eating your veggies." He's not even lying, which is the best part. "It's how I got my arm back, remember?"

 _"No,_ 'cuz I weren't _there."_

"Wasn't," Winry corrects, smoothing Maes' hair as she shoots Ed a warning look. _Reel it in dummy, he's getting properly mad._ "And of course you weren't there, you weren't born yet."

Yeah, yeah. He knows not to rile Maes too much, especially when he can't take him for a walk to cool off. "You can ask _Shūshu_ Al about it the next time he visits," he says placatingly. It can be Al's turn to field the awkward dismemberment/reattachment/wow what big scars you have Dad questions. "Or we can write him a letter when I get outta here, huh?"

Winry perks up. "Oh, that reminds me. Another crate arrived from Xing a couple days ago. I think Al went overboard on gifts again."

Ed tuts. "What'd he send this time? Please don't tell me Emperor Fancypants snuck another live animal in there." Resembool's very own flock of peafowl, ostensibly a wedding present, seems to double in size every time they go out there for a visit. Ed's pretty sure Ling's paying someone to ferret new birds across the border every year as a joke.

Winry shrugs. "I thought we'd wait to open it until you were home."

He opens his mouth to make a joke about finding a dead monkey inside if they do that, remembers the kids are _right there_ and already upset, and thinks better of it. He settles for some emphatic blinking, since he can't even waggle his eyebrow right now thanks to the dumb bandaging on his head. She just rolls her eyes.

"Dad, you smell bad," Nina points out.

"Rude," he says, and tickles her until she's squealing and even Maes stops fighting a smile. 

He's so damn glad to see them. He's _so damn glad_ they didn't get sick too.

* * *

Ed's bottom of the list of folk who would ever ascribe the concept of _miracles_ to anything in his life, but if there's any time to indulge in a little gratitude to somebody it'd be right after he's told he gets to go home days ahead of schedule. 

Of course, he'd prefer to bet money on BVU's administration being sick of the media circus that's apparently been swarming around its campus ever since some asshole let slip that the former Fullmetal Alchemist was laid out with something serious. It's been how many years since he quit the military? And his name _still_ shows up in the papers with irritating regularity for no goddamn discernible reason at all. Those bloodhounds had only _just_ calmed down about Winry expecting again too. Ugh.

Point is, the docs have ruled out cholera or black mold or any of the other really scary shit that would keep him here indefinitely and the house first in line for intensive restorations. Point is, he gets to go _home._

Sidi's personally handling his discharge, which is surely one part that family clinician charm and one part Dr. Caladoc and the rest of the ICU staff just eager to get Ed out of their hair. Ed does the wise thing and keeps his mouth shut while Sidi smiles ingratiatingly at everybody through all the paperwork and final checks. Once it’s just the three of them and Winry his smile sloughs off and he jabs a long finger practically up Ed's nose. "The _only_ reason you're being released now rather than being transferred to Centre de Santé Brahim is because I trust _her_ to handcuff _you_ to the bed until you're _properly_ on the mend," he threatens.

Winry beams, the maniac. 

Ed blinks at the finger in his face, feeling a little cross-eyed. "Nice nails," he says, nodding at the royal blue polish. They’re a match to the ribbon tying back his thick curls.

Sidi drops his hand, muttering unkindly in his native Cretan. Ed understands him just fine, of course, and as usual appreciates Cretan's natural flair for insults rather than taking offense at being called a pain in the ass. It's hardly the worst thing he's ever been called. "Incorrigible, that's what you are," Sidi despairs in Amestrian. "Now, is my favorite three-legged dog going to play nice, or must this darling woman strain herself in her delicate condition?"

Winry giggles. "I'm hardly the 'delicate' one in the room."

Ed sighs, flapping his hands to get the both of them to back up so he can scoot his one-legged butt into the wheelchair. His chest is tight and his muscles _hurt_ at being used so abruptly after days in bed, but he doesn't care. He just wants out of this damn place. "I'm cooperating, I'm cooperating, now get out of my way."

Garfiel had let Winry borrow his truck today so it's pretty easy to dodge the paparazzi with nothing more than a, "Don't y'all have anything better to do?" thrown out the window as they drive past. Then it's a quiet drive back home, Winry's finding his hand at every available moment.

* * *

Resigned to being coddled for at least the next couple of days, Ed only puts up a token fuss when Winry insists he be wheeled from the truck to their house too, never mind it's a million degrees out and Winry shouldn't be pushing his ass around when she's in her second trimester (a thought that makes him grin like a loon every time he remembers their family will be bigger before the year is out). He fusses a _touch_ more vigorously when she forbids him from going upstairs.

"But a shower," he whines. "And real clothes. And our _bed."_ Fuck, but he's missed their bed. They paid out the nose for it and it was an absolute bitch to get up the stairs, but it's the nicest mattress he's ever slept on and his back is _pissed_ about all the rough treatment lately.

"Two out of three will have to do for now," Winry replies, not an ounce of sympathy to be found.

She wheels him past her workshop (closed for business, all her customers rescheduled or funneled to Atelier Garfiel) and down the hall to Recovery 3, the room nearest the customer shower. It's been freshened up beyond the typical floor-to-ceiling wipedown, given a touch of home. There are more flowers on the nightstand, the quilt Mrs. Sheehy made them a few years back spread on the bed, a fresh change of clothes folded on top, his spare leg leaned against the bed. Make that two sets of clothes; that’s definitely Winry's banana yellow tank top. 

He cranes his neck to leer up at her. "Awful quiet here. The hellions still with Paninya?"

She presses a kiss to his temple, one hand sliding warm and familiar down his chest. "For another hour."

Neither of them are in any shape for real mutual satisfaction in the shower, the both of them exhausted and him feeling hollowed out and down a leg to boot, but they improvise. It helps that Winry thought to put the accessibility chair in the large shower beforehand, and for all that his dick's still sore from the damned catheter and she's only just passed her own nausea and on the cusp of constant hip and back pain, they manage _fun_ easily enough. There's something about Winry standing over him—grinning, naked, slick all over with apple-scented soap—that just sets him _off,_ never mind everything else. He's alive, and the most awesome woman in the world has somehow got it into her head that she loves him just as much as he loves her. For all that life can be so often terrifying and terrible, there are good times too.

Dried off and hair combed, they lay naked together on the narrow bed for a little while, just happy to run their hands gently over each other's bare skin. Winry sits propped up against a heap of pillows, Ed stretched out on his stomach between her folded legs. He rubs circles on her hips and the swell of her belly, she works out a knot in his shoulder with surgical precision.

It's good to be home.

There's something about the silence—the way their breathing fills the room, the way the bed creaks when he shifts so his leg dangles off the edge more comfortably, the way the late morning light streams in through the gauzy blue curtains—niggles. Something about being in here reminds him of....

Well. He's not sure, exactly.

It's like trying to recall with any clarity the strange dreams he had while in the hospital. He's got an idea something was there, but the details are blurred so completely that he's left piecing a picture together by its absences rather than with what he can remember. It's the same with what little he can dredge up from his last clear memories before the food poisoning took a hard right into the ICU. A room in darkness. An orange slice of light pouring in through an open door. Winry, pale and frightened. A vague flush of fury, though what had infuriated him he can only guess at.

"Did—" He has to adjust his head a bit to speak, clearing his throat. "Did I punch Paninya?"

Winry's hands still. "You remember that?"

Damn. He'd really hoped that had been part of the dreams. "Kinda. I don't know why I'd do that though."

Her hands begin moving again, drifting up to run fingers through his damp hair. "You had a 41 degree fever. You were confused, angry. Hallucinating too, maybe. It was hard to tell."

He hisses through his teeth, long and soft. No wonder his memory's spotty. "Guess that explains my quick trip down the stairs. Arm too," he adds, twitching the left a little. His elbow is all bruises from the IV he'd torn out. It doesn't hurt, not yet at least, which is something. 

Winry brushes the edge of it, tutting. "You wouldn't let me clean that up, either."

He tries to think back, to _remember._ What could have possessed him to think like that? He must have bled all over the place. It must have taken her or Garfiel an age to clean it all up. He remembers the anger. An anger born of fear. Fear of what? Needles—sure, always. Not likely he's ever going to shake that one. But he'd looked at Winry and... begged?

"I yelled at you," he hazards.

"...Yeah."

"Why?"

"It doesn't matter—"

"Course it does. What'd I say?"

"Edward." A note of warning heats her voice. _Drop it, please._ But if she doesn't want to talk about it, that bad it means he said some awful shit to her. Something cruel. He gently kneads her hips, waiting.

She tugs at his hair with a sigh. "You thought I was going to cut your arm off."

Ed—

—recoils.

He leans back, mindful not to put too much of his weight on her thighs, to better stare aghast at her. _"What?"_

"You were confused," she insists. "Delirious."

"I don't care. That's _insane."_

The smile she gives him isn't happy. It's knowing. Understanding. She drags her nails along his scalp; a loud, satisfying thrill of sensation that turns him to putty in no time at all. "You were scared. It made sense to you at the time."

"Still." It comes out a little slurred. _"Mm._ Cheater."

She tackles the tension built up at the base of his skull he hadn't even realized was there, chuckling when he groans feebly and slumps back into her lap. "You're welcome."

He wants to be mad. He wants to go back and grab himself by the collar, shake himself until he sees sense again. Winry's the last person in the world who'd wish him harm. Winry's the last person in the world who'd hurt him for the fun of it. But that's impossible, and Winry isn't mad at him now. Still. "M'sorry. For what I said."

"It's okay." Back to combing her fingers through his hair, loosening the small tangles her scratching had made. "What else do you remember?"

"Mm. Not much. Mostly weird dreams, I think." He's pretty sure he dreamed Winry _died._ No _way_ is he telling her that. "I was in and out, at the hospital. Heard Sidi talkin', that kind of thing. Did I do anything crazy there too?"

"No," is all she says, her voice shrunken. 

Shit.

Sidi had been a model professional in front of BVU's team, answering Ed's question while somehow twisting his words until all the scare had been wrung from them. The clinical details of his food poisoning are all neatly written down in a file the man's probably going through for the umpteenth time back at his clinic. Ed knows, objectively, that this is yet another tally to add to his personal count of near-death experiences. But hearing about it secondhand isn't the same thing as remembering it clearly.

"...It was bad," he says, matching her tone. "Wasn't it."

"...Yeah. It was."

"I'm sorry.”. 

She huffs. "Don't wear it out, dummy. It was just bad luck. That's all."

Bad luck, sure. _Bad luck's_ been trying to drag him into an early grave since they were kids. Sheer spite and a hell of a lot of good people in his life are what's kept him out of it. Luck, good or bad, is hardly worth the effort to spell let alone put something so haphazard as _belief_ to it. He opens his mouth to say as much when something bumps lightly against his tender forehead.

 _"Oh,"_ Winry says, startled but pleased.

He blinks, a grin slowly overtaking his whole face as he looks up at her. "Was that...?"

"The baby, yeah. They've been restless the past couple days. I hardly got any sleep last night."

"Nina 2.0," he jokes, framing her belly in his hands and pressing a kiss to it. "Be good for your Mom, kiddo."

Winry giggles, the best sound in the world. "If only it were that easy."

* * *

They don't have all the time in the world to lie there in the solid and irrefutable facts of their mutual existences. No sense getting caught with their pants off if it can't be spun into an embarrassing but hilarious story later. Winry gets dressed while Ed does his gleeful best to hinder her, then she attaches his spare leg, and finally with great reluctance he gets dressed too. He's only just tugging his shirt on when Paninya's voice sings out from the workshop to announce their arrival.

He turns to Winry hopefully. "Lunch?"

She rolls her eyes, but in that sagging shoulder way that means he's managed to win without needing to grease her gears first. "You're staying in bed the rest of the day. No arguing."

That's fine with him. He's exhausted, not that he'll admit that out loud. All his body wants him to do is crawl back into bed and sleep another 12-plus hours, but what _he_ wants takes precedence, and what _he_ wants is to spend some time with family. Lunch is the perfect excuse; he needs calories to get his strength back anyway. And besides, it's only one flight of stairs to the kitchen. 

...which is, apparently, just about all he can handle at the moment.

"And there he is!" Paninya exclaims once he—finally—makes it to the landing. Ed, wheezing, gets a glimpse of unmistakable smugness on her face before he's swarmed by a pair of small bodies smacking against his legs. It's lucky they push him at an angle into the wall rather than back down the stairs; he's not so sure Winry could keep all four of them from tumbling all the way back down. Personally speaking, he's good on stitches for at least six months if he can help it.

"Oof," he laughs, ruffling two blond heads. His hands tingle painfully but he doesn't give a single shit, stupidly pleased to see his kids grinning up at him.

 _"You're back!"_ Maes and Nina yell at top volume.

 _"I'm back!"_ He yells just as loudly. "Have y'all been good for Auntie 'Ninya?"

"I helped her fix a sink," Nina says. "It was gross!"

"Ew, I bet. What about you, big guy?"

"He sweet-talked Missus B into making lunch for all of us," Paninya replies. "Homemade cookies too."

Maes ducks his head, embarrassed. Ed ruffles his hair again, hugging him close. "Missus B?"

"Lives in the pink apartment on 8th Street? She's got the, you know," Paninya makes a wild sweeping gesture around her head, "all that hair."

"I have no idea who you're talking about."

Winry nudges him in the back, peering past his shoulder to smile. "Come on, you two. Give your Dad some space. He shouldn't be on his feet so much yet."

"Here." Paninya stands, positioning her chair at the dining table so it's easier for Ed to sink into with barely-stifled relief. "I promised Mister Holtman I'd fix his roof last week. There's rain forecasted tomorrow, so I can't stick around."

"Thanks," Ed says, bumping knuckles with her. "For watchin' em."

"You know it's no trouble."

"And sorry for punchin' you."

She hugs Winry, kissing her cheek, then throws a crooked grin over her shoulder. _"That_ you owe me big for."

The kids, as he should have realized, go bug-eyed. "You _punched_ her?" Maes asks, Nina chasing it with an indignant, "What for?!"

"I deserved it," Paninya steps in soothingly. "I was being a jerk."

"You were _not,"_ Ed retorts. She just rolls her eyes and trots down the stairs with a loud ease Ed finds himself vaguely jealous of. Whatever. He'll be in fighting shape again in a week, tops. He'll get her back the next time they go for a run across the rooftops.

Winry skirts past them all, heading for their narrow kitchen. "You two wanna help me make lunch?"

Nina, their mad magpie, immediately forgets about everything else except the opportunity to hop up on the little footstool Ed had made for her, slapping her hands excitedly on the counter. Maes though, hesitates, eyes darting from Ed to the stairs. "What happened with ‘Ninya?"

Ed gestures him over, "Remember when you got sick a couple months ago?"

A nod. "Your birthday. I couldn't eat any cake."

"Ha, yeah. You had a fever. Remember how bad it made you feel?" Another nod. "Well, I had a _really_ high fever when I was sick. A fever gets as high as mine, it can hurt your brain. You can get confused, not sure if you're awake or having a nightmare. I guess I thought punching 'Ninya was a good idea at the time, so I did."

Maes' nose wrinkles. "You're brain damaged?"

Winry barks laughter from the kitchen, barely smothering it when Ed glares at her. _"Sorry,_ sorry, just—h-ere, sweetie, can you get the carrots out?"

Ed pulls Maes a bit closer, hand loosely looped around his thin wrist so his attention is on Ed and not the kitchen shenanigans. "My brain's fine," he says. "Promise."

A few too many concussions under his belt, maybe, and never mind that the running joke/explanation for why the former Fullmetal Alchemist can't alchemize his way out of a wet paper bag these days _is,_ in fact, a handwaved bit of brain damage. He also did manage to hurl himself face-first down a flight of stairs into his own automail and several convulsions after that courtesy of the worst goddamn food poisoning of his life. No way he's gonna say all _that_ right now though. He wants Maes happy, not stressing out over his dumb dad.

"I went to the hospital 'cuz I got too sick for me and your Mom to handle on our own," he continues. "But Doctor Brahim and some other doctors took great care of me, which is why I'm home now. Me and my brain are just fine. Okay?"

The worried pinch to Maes' mouth softens. "I'm glad you're okay."

"You and me both. Now c'mon, we can't let those two do all the work, can we?"

Winry brandishes a knife in his direction before he even has a chance to stand up. _"You_ stay put. Maes, can you go down to the herb garden and get some thyme and parsley? Three sprigs of both, please."

Maes bolts down the stairs with a "'Kay!" tossed over his shoulder. Ed gets up anyway, sticking his tongue out when the knife is brandished more aggressively. _"Maybe_ I want some tea and _maybe_ I don't wanna make you drop everything to make it. Is that okay with you?"

"Hmph. _Maybe."_

He snorts and goes to fetch the kettle from the drying rack. As he's filling it at the sink he leans back against the counter, luxuriating in being able to stretch his stiff shoulders. It's as he's coaxing his joints into popping that his eyes happen to fall on a large crate in the living room he hadn't noticed before. There are unbroken inspection seals all over it. He can make out the characters for _Elric_ stamped in green from here. "Damn, you weren't kidding about the gifts."

"I wasn't too surprised, to be honest. I swear, he gets more excited about our anniversary than we do—which you haven't missed, so relax."

His shoulders hadn't even had a chance to tense yet. "Stop reading my mind, it's creepy."

Still, talk about bad timing. He was going to tell her about the weekend trip to South City he'd planned for their anniversary the day after he got sick. If she intends to keep the shop closed as long as he suspects she will, they'll have to settle for a nice dinner locally instead. It's probably not too late to refund the tickets. They can talk about it tonight, after the kids are asleep.

Nina perks up like a bloodhound at the mention of gifts. She starts tugging urgently on Winry's apron. "Can we open it now? You said we could when Dad came home and he's home now!"

"After lunch," Ed and Winry say simultaneously. 

Nina starts to keen like the world's coming to an end, which would be an awful thing to listen to if it weren't so ridiculous. Ed kills the water and sets the kettle on the counter so he can detangle her from Winry's legs. She hasn't swan dived right into real tears, but her face is flushed and twisted up with frustration bigger than her vocabulary can handle yet. "Hey, bud, ease up. No flailing when there's knives around."

"I wanna open it now!"

"Nope, sorry."

"Why _not!"_

"'Cuz I wanna eat with you and your brother and your Mom, and I wanna hear about everything you've been up to while I've been gone. Is that a crime?"

She gives him a look of pure disgust. "It's _insufferable,_ is what it is."

 _"You—!_ What!" He whirls around to throw a betrayed glare at Winry, who's laughing so hard she has to steady herself on the counter. 

Maes reappears on the landing, a dishrag full of herbs clenched in his fists, slowing to take in the scene. "Uh. What happened now?"

"Your sister swallowed a dictionary, apparently" Ed grumbles.

"Huh?"

"Nothin'. Hey you—" He prods Nina's stomach, earning a scowl. "Compromise, huh? Lunch is gonna take a while, so how about you two help out while I make tea. After the tea's done I'll crack the crate open. You two can choose _one_ thing to open now. Everything else waits 'til after lunch. How's that?"

Maes and Nina hold an entire conversation in a single shared look. "Deal," Maes says firmly.

Ed grins, clapping his hands and rubbing them together excitedly. He doesn't want to wait until after lunch without at least a glimpse of what's inside that crate either. "Great! Now lemme get the tea started, then we—"

The room _bursts_ with blue-white light the second his fingers brush the teakettle. Instinct has him jerking back to shield the kids even as his brain's spitting question marks. He throws a panicked look in Winry's direction to make sure she's not in danger either, but by then the light's already fading to a sullen crackle, and then dims to nothing.

There’s a beat of stunned silence.

Then, _impossibly,_ the teakettle begins to whistle.

"Whoa," Maes breathes.

"That," Winry starts, but doesn't finish. She sounds shaken. Of course she does. She recognized it too.

Ed swallows. Closes the few feet he'd retreated. Reaches out. Snatches his hand back before he can burn himself. The teakettle's _hot._ The steam is proof enough of that, but it's not possible, he _can't—_

He looks at his hands. Two real, flesh and bone hands. His hands. Hands that have only ever done together what he's just done two other days in his life, and should be impossible now. And yet, somehow—

Al's voice, unbidden, echoes out of that recesses of his mind where his fever dreams have already begun to scum over, senseless memories that are meant to be discarded for the frightening nonsense they are. 

_"Go on. You still owe Winry a dance."_

_"What about you?"_

_"I'll get the next one."_

"Ed," Winry cautions, but he's already stumbling away.

"Ed!" Winry shouts, but he's already halfway down the stairs.

"Ed, where are you going?!" But he's already in the showroom, catching himself on the glass countertop, wheezing as his heart and head clamor, a thundering of drums he can scarcely bear to hear, a thundering of drums he can't outrun.

There's someone at the shop’s front door when he throws it open.

"Oh!" A guy—a kid; shaggy brown hair, dark eyed, desert dust clinging to his shirt—blinks at him, and smiles wide. "Mister Rockbell! Heard you was in the hospital. It’s good to see you on your feet again."

Ed stares.

"Er—telegram for you," the kid says, and it's enough to place him. Ed doesn't know his name, but he's at the post office often enough to recognize him as one of their runners. He takes the telegram, no larger than a postcard. He keeps staring.

"Um." The kid clears his throat, nervous. "Mister Wurzer asked me to pass somethin' on too. He'd like it if your friends in Xing would stop sending you coded messages. Drives him half-crazy, y'know? He keeps thinkin' his hearin's finally goin'—"

Ed shuts the door in the kid's face.

The telegram isn't from Lan Fan, as anything not from Al directly usually is. This is the first time Ling has ever sent him something without a heap of obnoxious fanfare. The cipher is a simple one, unusually so, and easily broken. Ed can read the message almost as quickly as if it had been written in plain Amestrian. A few bitterly short lines written all in capital letters, lacking any human tone or cadence, stripped of the hush Ling would have spoken with if he were here to speak them instead.

_It is with deepest regrets that I inform you that your brother, Alphonse Elric, has—_

His nerveless fingers drop the telegram before he can finish reading it, but it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter.

He already knows how it ends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 7\. Hello and welcome to the soulmate AU nobody wanted. :)


	4. Chapter 4

The next few days are flush with activity. Plans outlined. Bags packed. Tickets purchased. Appropriate attire unearthed from the back of the closet and taken in for alterations. He's lost weight, Winry's gained, and the kids have never been to a—

They've never needed these kinds of clothes before.

As things stand, he's been able to cocoon himself within a tolerable numbness. People and all their insipid conversations glide right past him without so much as a fingerprint to prove they were ever there. He observes the passage of time as if watching a silent film. People and places come and go, and he sits where he sits until Winry gently tugs at his arm to lead him to some new location.

He knows Sidi makes two house calls, asking questions and tutting over his lack of appetite. He knows he finally shaves, clumsily. He knows Winry removes his stitches because his own hands are still too shaky. He knows she reattaches his automail, perhaps the most gentle as she's ever been. He knows she opens the crate from Al in an effort to distract Maes and Nina with the toys and games packed carefully among the anniversary gifts he can't bear to touch. He knows she reads him the included letter in a damp voice when they're alone. He knows Al wrote that by happy coincidence the formal announcement of his betrothal to Mei was going to be on the same day as their own anniversary. 

He knows there's a sound lodged in his throat he can't afford to let loose, because he won't be able to stop whatever it is if he does. So he doesn't. He swallows it down, bites his tongue, and does what needs doing.

He knows too, that he doesn't do enough. He tries. Honest, he does. But he'll pick up the phone in the showroom and end up staring blankly at the light glinting off an automail hand in its velvet-draped display case. He'll start making coffee and then his eyes find the teakettle that's gone untouched since he boiled the water inside with a touch. He'll try to answer the questions Maes and Nina ask in small, worried voices only to find his own voice has slunk off to hide when he wasn't paying attention.

Winry's as bad off as he is. Of course she is. She's hardly stopped crying since she read the telegram. She broke a cup at one point and cut her hand. Ed had sat with her on the couch to clean and bandage it, held her until they'd both stopped shaking, then gone to sweep the mess up. It was only after he'd thrown the glass out and put the dustpan back in the pantry that he remembered they could have avoided the last ten minutes if he'd just... clapped his hands.

He'd bitten his cheek bloody, swallowing the ugly noise _that_ realization demanded.

They wouldn't have gotten anything done without Paninya and Garfiel's help. Garfiel had come upstairs that first day to welcome him back from the hospital and realized _something_ had happened without them needing to say a word. He'd swept in, all smiles, bribed the kids to run off to get ice cream from the parlor down the street, then pulled Ed and Winry into a bone-cracking hug and promised to help however they needed. Paninya had done practically the same thing down to the letter, and she'd dragged the whole LeCoulte family into it for good measure. Benny, their oldest that Winry had delivered that stormy night so many years ago, reminds Ed uncomfortably of himself at that age. He tucks Maes and Nina into a corner, reads them stories and makes up games, keeps them occupied and out of the way so the adults can get things done.

The days are flush with activity. The nights are anything but. He spends those bleak hours staring up at the ceiling, Al's stupid cat glued to his side, Winry laying as restless as him. They don't speak. They can’t speak.

If Ed sleeps, he doesn’t dream.

* * *

He knows it's been three days since the telegram arrived, because he and Winry had to board the first north-bound train this morning. Paninya will be bringing the kids to Resembool directly a couple days from now. They're going to Ishval first, to meet with Mei per Ling's instruction. Mei will have answers. Mei will be bringing—

Ed can't finish that thought. He can't finish any thought regarding—

He _can't._

This morning he boarded a train in Rush Valley. This afternoon he's awaiting the arrival of a different train in Kankawati. Sweat clings to him like a second skin. An oven-hot wind is rising, the threat of a sandstorm in the sting of fine dust in his eyes. There's a notable difference in the quality of desert found between the two cities, the two climes. Home is coarse and gritty, surrounded on all sides by plateau mountains being ground patiently down by wind, water, and time. There are about three weeks every year where Rush Valley is transformed by the spring rains into a green and flowering place, and then the river dries up and everything dies again. The desert in what little he's seen of Ishval, today and before today, is more of an ivory color than tan, and the sand has an almost paint-like quality to it. It drips and smears. It gets into every nook and cranny, dyes everything it touches. 

He breathes in deeply, until his lungs are full of Ishval. He wonders how much of the fine dust in the air is ash, still stubbornly sticking around decades after the Extermination. He wonders how much of it Mustang's responsible for. Maybe it's better, not knowing. Maybe ignorance really is bliss.

He doesn't want the train to arrive. He doesn't want to see Mei. He doesn't want to see—

Winry's hand finds his thigh, rubbing away the tension near the seam of his automail. "There's a food cart over there," she whispers. She's not raised her voice once, since the telegram. "You should eat something."

It's an exhausting effort to shake his head, but it's Winry. He'd do anything, for her.

"Ed...." She sighs. "How 'bout some coffee?"

He breathes desert dust, in and out. "Okay."

He watches her stand without turning his head, watches her take that extra second to balance on account of the life growing in her belly, watches her go to the cart where an Ishvalan about their age smiles genially at her as if the past is something that has no bearing on any of them. Ed may have been a kid during the worst of the Extermination but he remembers the horror of it echoing out even all the way to sleepy little Resembool, even before the news of Winry's parents found them. Ed can hardly claim to have been more than grazed by those years. He can’t even imagine what it was like to be here for it. He marvels at this other man's capacity to forgive.

From beyond a turn in the tracks that he can barely see from the wooden bench he's slouched on, a train whistle blows. He's running out of time. He'd give anything for Mei not to be on that train, but he knows better than to pray.

On his left, coming out of the shadows of the station entrance, he hears the clunky approach of jackboots strolling casually. A moment later, Mustang's voice calls out, dry with incomprehensible good humor. "Edward! I wish I could say it's a surprise to see you here."

Ed grunts.

Mustang and a near dozen cronies approach him, an unwelcome cluster of dusty blueberry uniforms glittering with gold accoutrements. "Führer Grumman received a discreet communiqué from Emperor Yao recently. I suppose I can't ever expect one Elric getting involved in State affairs without the other turning up, hm?"

Ed grunts.

Mustang cocks his head, his amusement gaining a fine patina of concern. "Good god, what did you do to your face this time?"

"Fell."

Funny, how easy it is to truncate events into a single syllable. The less said the better, as far as he's concerned. Anyone else would get the hint he's not interested in talking. Just his luck though, Mustang knows him almost as well as—

Well.

Mustang gives him a considering once-over. His concern doesn't deepen so much as focus. He's paying attention now, loosening the collar of his debonair hedonist skin-suit to let the decent person hiding inside peek out. Ed wishes he and all his cronies would just fuck off. "Rush Valley is still in one piece, last I heard. I suppose you jumped face-first into somebody else's business on your way here."

The train appears around the bend in a maddening squeal of metal as it brakes, slowing for a smooth stop at the end of the line. Ed breathes desert dust, in and out. He's happily turned most of his attention away from the military and all its administrative trappings in the years since he quit. He knows the Reconstruction effort is still going strong, that it's likely only doing so because Mustang traipses tirelessly across the country to rattle the necessary cages until more money falls out. Mustang wouldn't joke like this. Not if he knew. He must not have seen Ed's name in the paper, doesn't know he was hospitalized. That makes sense. What the hell does _discreet communiqué_ mean anyway?

Ed clears his throat. "What'd the Führer tell you."

"That Princess Chang would be arriving today, and that I would adjust my schedule accordingly to escort her and her retinue as required. You know what the fuss is about, naturally."

The train finally stops, settling onto the tracks with a last explosive sigh of coal smoke. Hot metal ticks in the blistering heat. A scorched breeze hits the station, scattering dust across the concrete. A pebble pings off Ed's boot, heard more than felt. The nearest car creaks, rocking gently with the movements of the passengers inside. So, not likely Al's on that one.

"Naturally," he rasps.

"Wh—ah, Winry!" Ed can _hear_ the flashbulb pop of the politician's smile Mustang gives her as she approaches, two paper cups of coffee in hand. He still hasn't figured out that it doesn't matter the caliber, Winry always knows when somebody's trying to dazzle her with bullshit. "How lovely to see you again. I haven't had the opportunity to congratulate you in person yet."

"What?"

"The baby, of course."

"O-oh. Right. Thank you."

"Do you know what it's going to be yet?"

"Ah—no. I have an appointment in a couple weeks to find out though."

"How wonderful. You both must be excited."

"I... yeah. We are."

"Congratulations," Hawkeye says from somewhere among the cronies. The rest dutifully echo her after a pause. She's probably giving them the gimlet eye while her hand creeps toward a holster. 

Mustang continues to carry on a conversation practically with himself. "Will Princess Chang and Alphonse be staying in the country until the baby's due? I don't know how we'll keep the press out of your hair for that long if that's the case. They've gotten into the habit of rioting without a good bone to pick, and your husband’s an old favorite of theirs."

Somebody wheezes like their solar plexus just met the business end of somebody's boot. It takes Ed a moment to recognize the sound as a deranged attempt at laughter. It takes him another to realize the sound came from him.

Hawkeye and the cronies all go wide-eyed and still. Their eyes are brands on his skin; all his limbs burn anew. It's not real, of course. Just his imagination. Psychosomatic. Residual pins and needles from his damn food poisoning. Like the cause really matters.

A hand curls against the back of the bench. Ed focuses on it instead of who it's attached to. He watches the rigid line of scar tissue on display; the way it lightens in some areas and darkens in others. It's strange, to see Mustang's hand without the pristine white glove, the flame array done in cherry red stitching. But that's stupid of Ed to expect to see it here in Ishval, the last place Mustang could ever stomach wearing his gloves. Hell, there are probably laws against it.

"What's wrong," Mustang asks quietly, genuine concern deepening his voice. Ed's earned his full attention at last; he chafes beneath its weight.

_"Don't,"_ Winry begs, her voice brittle. Ed wants to cover her mouth with both hands so he doesn't have to hear her speak so. It's not right for her to sound like that. He stays put. He keeps his eyes on the door of the train car in front of him. It's the easier thing to do.

"Something's happened," Mustang realizes. There's not nearly enough dread in his voice. Whatever he's imagined isn't even close to the truth.

Ha. Truth.

"Mister Mustang, please...."

The door rattles open and Ed's off like a shot. Behind him he hears Winry say, "Alphonse," and Mustang's stunned, "Oh, god." There are words between that, and after that too, but he doesn't want to hear them. 

He almost doesn't recognize Mei when she steps out of the train car. She prefers loud dresses with a hundred secret pockets for all her knives, but today she's wearing a shapeless robe of undyed linen, a matching hood covering her hair. There are no elaborate braids peaking out, not a stitch of gold nor a single jade bead to denote her as royalty or as an alkahestrist. She looks exhausted, as shrunken as an old apple. When her dark eyes meet his they immediately well over with fresh tears.

_"Edward,"_ she tries, but her voice breaks. He grabs her by the shoulders when she sways, but he has no idea who’s actually bracing who. His knees feel like jelly, his feet non-existent. He can't catch his breath.

"Mei," he forces out. "Mei. Tell me—what happened. Ling's—the telegram didn't say—how—"

"Alphonse," she hiccups, "He wasn't supposed to be alone that night. There have been threats, threats against both of us, but—we thought we knew which clans would—we thought we'd _planned_ for everything, that we'd taken every precaution, but—but I was called away—it was urgent, I _had_ to go, Edward, he _wasn't supposed to be alone—"_

Ed squeezes her arms. "What _happened."_

She shakes her head, tears streaming down her splotched face. "I—h-he was—"

A loud _bang!_ from the next car down startles them both badly. It's less that Ed looks for the source of it as he finds his gaze reflexively following Mei's. The door of the next car has been flung open to allow several people in armored black uniforms and brightly colored masks to carry out—

_"Oh,"_ Mei exclaims, anguished, "Edward, wait—"

He ignores her. He has to. He staggers toward the Imperial Guards, relying on his right leg more than his left to get him there. His damn stump won't stop _aching._ There'd been a whole thing with Winry back home about it before they'd boarded the train this morning, about the practicality of bringing along a cane at least if he wouldn’t use crutches. He'd won that argument, technically. Neither of them had been up for the heated bickering an actual argument would have warranted. He's kind of regretting not having something to steady himself against now. He can't help his heavy limp. He can't really care about it either.

The guards who aren't carrying the—

The guards who aren't carrying anything step back to let him pass. One of them, wearing a garish red mask, says something tersely in Xingese, too low for Ed to make out clearly. The guards stop in perfect unison, kneeling to carefully leverage the—

They set their burden down, then step back as well. They all give him ample space to see the—

They give him privacy to view what they've brought with them all the way from Dàdū.

He’s able to look at it directly and feel nothing more than the passive interest of a museum patron viewing something beautiful and untouchable. It's a work of art, technically speaking. Its construction is geometrically perfect, its decoration artistically perfect too. Gleaming black lacquered wood, complex curlicues done in gold paint, a flamel detailed down to the snake's scales in mother of pearl. Al would have hated it. The fuss, the expense, the waste. He would've been too polite to say as much, though. It was a gift, after all. 

And it's beautiful, really, as coffins go.

Ed's legs give out. He hits the concrete like a sack of flour, catching himself against it. He leaves streaking fingerprints across the lid immediately, of course. It's so, so easy to imagine Al chastising him for that. But the reality is: silence.

Silence, but for the rushing wind.

* * *

The sandstorm will pass by morning. They're short but brutal events here, sure to draw blood. Not like in the South. Back home the air gradually thickens over a sullen stretch of days until the smoke and dust make it too hazardous for the old or sickly to go outside. Ed supposes it's a good thing his leg's still not cooperating as it should be. He can't go stomping into the midst of a sandstorm when he's fresh off a ventilator himself. Not that he isn't tempted anyway.

They've somehow ended up in Scar's house of all places. It's appallingly domestic. Brightly-colored woven rugs decorate the red-tiled floor. Large Xingese paintings hang on the walls. There's a candlelit shrine to Ishvala in one corner, framed photographs of Mei and Al in another. Ed wants to crawl out of his own skin and sprint for the darkest, coldest corner of this newly rebuilt city until it's time to leave.

Winry, drawing from some hidden well of baffling strength, somehow stomachs bumping elbows with Scar and Brigadier General Miles as they prep dinner for a full house. There's a pass-through in the wall separating the kitchen and dining room; Ed finds some meager comfort in the occasional glimpse of her. Scar makes laps around the table at regular intervals, finding time to top off everyone's tea between all the glowering he does at Mustang. Ed's been more interested in watching his cup cool while other people talk at him than drinking it. Scar realized that early on, and wordlessly replaces his cup with a fresh one instead. It's nice of him. It's horrible. Ed has no idea how Winry can stand to be in the same city as Scar, much less the same room. He knows the two of them hashed things out one month while he was still traveling more than he wasn't, but he's never asked Winry for details. She'd tell him if he did, but it's always seemed too... private. Too bleak. He doesn't want to pry without her offering first.

Mei and Mustang are sitting at the dining table with him. Hawkeye's out elsewhere, putting the Amestrian cronies to roost so she can take care of whatever to-do list Mustang had whispered in her ear. She'd hugged Ed before she'd left, and he'd been horrified to see she was holding back tears as she strode away. It was the first time he's ever seen her cry. It left him feeling gutted.

Mustang's here because Mei requested he stay. She'd asked Ed if that was alright, considering—

Ed had said it was fine. It didn't matter what he really thought about it and they all knew it, so why pretend? So the three of them hunch over cups of tea while the others busy themselves in the kitchen, and Mei tells them what happened. She tries to break it gently, whispering when she isn't sniffling. She tries to make it make sense when she's clearly struggling with that herself. To Ed though, it's the how and where of it that are complicated, terrible, and ugly. The why is easy.

Politics is why.

Politics is always why, when it comes down to it.

Ed's been hearing about twelve different opinions on Xing's political scene for years, and up to this point has been happy to not have a dog in that shitshow of a race. How times change. There have been clans protesting every little thing Ling's been trying to do since day one. Some more, some less. Most have realized by now that it's better to at least pretend they're falling in line while they scheme behind the scenes. A few have openly resisted setting aside tradition for tradition's sake to the point of civil war. A few others have been clever in their resistance. It was one of these who had decided to act.

The Changs had been bottom of the barrel for generations, politically speaking; too poor and too few in number to throw their weight around and expect anything other than a Pyrrhic victory at best. That had changed after Ling became Emperor. First, the Yaos had taken the Changs under their wing as allies rather than as conquerors to the benefit of both. Then Ling took it a step further and declared Mei his successor, at least until he got around to siring some sprogs of his own. Course, Ling's time as a homunculus had a couple unexpected side effects that have decided to linger; he _can't_ have kids apparently, not that he'll ever admit that publicly. Ed had laughed himself sick over the heavily ciphered but unmistakably whiny letter Ling had sent him when he'd found out. It doesn't seem all that funny anymore.

Mei being first in line for the Imperial Throne had caused uproar enough, sure, but then she'd gone and fallen in love with a _foreign commoner._ It didn't matter that Al was worth his weight in gold and sweet on her besides. It didn't matter that Ling had thrown his fancypants hat and all the authority it came with into Al's corner, or that Ling had happily thrown a pile of obnoxiously officious titles (and all the authority _those_ came with) into Al's lap too. It didn't matter that Al had gone the extra mile and _proved_ their old man and the Western Sage had been the same person. It didn't matter that their old man is still halfway deified in Xing, or that a direct descendant—and a son no less—practically demanded that same reverence simply by existing. Al hadn't done it for the reverence, of course; he was embarrassed by it, mostly. He'd done it because he wanted people to understand that their old man had been a person, not a god, and as infallible as anybody else. The position in the Imperial Court and the Secondborn Son shit had all just been good ways to get the protesting nobles off his dick.

Or so they'd all assumed. Fools all of them, Ed most of all.

When Mei had left Xing there'd still been no leads on which unhappy clan had decided to go a step above and beyond airing their grievances in the Court. The—

The _assassin—_

—had been skilled, and thorough besides. A half dozen of Ling's personal guards died the same night Alphonse was—

—poisoned.

Ed's mouth is dry, reluctant to open, but he has to ask. He knows the why. He needs to know— "How."

Mei doesn't want to tell him, of course. But he gets it out of her in the end. The assassin used knives and garrotes on the guards, saving their magnum opus for Al: an elixir that royalty and alkahestrists alike had once consumed in an attempt to purge the humanity right out of themselves. Immortality in a bottle, provided you survived drinking it. Loosely translated, the name of the elixir means _golden._ A direct insult to the self-proclaimed son of the Sage.

Gold. Arsenic. Mercury. Measured out and mixed up neatly in wine to make it smoother on the way down. It doesn't take much of any one to kill somebody, but the assassin hadn't taken any chances. They'd made sure Al finished the bottle.

Al should've been dead by the time Mei found him the next morning. He wasn't. The court alkahestrists, Mei included, worked day and night trying to save him. It wasn't enough. In the days before he finally slipped away Al never regained consciousness. For all that it began with betrayal and pain, it ended peacefully. Al's death was a quiet surrender in the dead of night.

Mei doesn't fall apart in the telling, not like she did at the first sight of Ed at the station. She's been scoured by her grief, made a hollow shell of the brilliant person she was—before. Mustang sits beside her, saying nothing, her left hand held in both of his. When she finally finishes he's got the same expression on his face he gets when his past grows too heavy; dead-eyed and carved from stone, weathering the storm because he doesn't have any other choice.

"Today," Ed tries, but has to pause to clear his throat. He tilts his head toward the pass-through, where Winry's pinned-up hair shines almost as pale as Scar's and Brigadier General Miles' in the overhead lights. They're still in their own little world over there, one of soft conversation, grilling meat, the chop of a knife against a cutting board. "Today's our anniversary."

Mei shrinks. "I know."

"You. You were gonna announce your betrothal today too. Make it nice and official."

A fresh tear escapes the miserable scrunch of her eyes. _"Y-yes."_

This information makes Mustang resemble less a headstone and more a man desperate for any excuse to bolt out of the room. 

Ed's gaze lingers on his own hands, cupped around the warm curl of old Xiao Mei. He must really look pathetic; the little monster's barely gnawed on his fingers at all ever since Mei dumped her in his lap. He strokes the panda's soft face with one thumb, earning a sigh of contentment as she nuzzles him back. "I've been sick," he says. "Food poisoning. Didn't know it was possible for it to get as bad as it did. I got out of the hospital the same day Ling's telegram—"

Ed—

—breathes.

He doesn't want to say any of this. But the words spool out of him of their own accord, like laundry hung out to dry.

"I don't remember—much. Dreams, mostly, and those didn't make much sense, but. That's just dreams, right? But I get it now. That... connection he and I had, the one that kept his body alive in the Gate, it never really went away. We weren't ever sure, before, and neither of us wanted to go poking at it to find out. Just in case, y'know? But it wasn't food poisoning. I got sick when Al was—attacked. I was dying because—because _he_ was. I would've died too, but he figured it out. He realized what was happening, so he did the only thing he could. He let me go."

Ed's known ever since the damn teakettle. The telegram had just been unnecessary confirmation. He'd talked Al out of looking for a way to get his leg back years ago, never mind his alchemy. He didn't need either to be happy. Or to feel whole, for that matter. Al got that. Al wouldn't have gone behind his back to retrieve either, not now. Not by choice.

Mei and Mustang have both gained new edges to their faces, something greater than concern but less terrible than understanding. Their dark eyes flicker toward each other, wordlessly asking which of them is better qualified to handle an Elric teetering near a dangerous ledge. It'd be funny, in other circumstances. Better circumstances. He knows Al would laugh too, if—

If.

Mustang moves first, letting Mei's hand go to weave his fingers together. The scars on the backs of his hands twist, raised and dark as river clay. It's easier to watch his hands than the hesitation furrowing his frown.

"Edward, I'm sorry. Truly I am. I can't begin to imagine—" A careful breath. "But you mustn't blame yourself for this. Your illness was—unfortunately timed, that's all. There was nothing you could have done to save Alphonse. Even if you'd been healthy, even if you'd been in Dàdū with him. He wouldn't want you to burden yourself like this. You know that."

Ed smiles. It feels artificial, like somebody else's amusement on display. He shifts Xiao Mei off his hands, sliding her onto the table so he can pick up his tea. There's still a trace of warmth to the little cup, a beautiful and delicate thing. Pure silver, at a glance. The full set must have cost a fortune. Definitely a gift from Mei. Did Al help pick it out?

He drains the cup, hardly tasting it, and sets it carefully back down. Then he claps his hands.

When the blue-white light dies down the cup has become a toy horse, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. He considers it critically, cataloging each flaw. The scaling in the mane, the uneven flowers of the cup’s original design, the broomstick puff of its tail. Still, not bad for a guy who hasn't done practical alchemy in years.

He looks up. Mei and Mustang's faces have been transmuted too. Their wary concern has become something akin to horror. In the kitchen, silence bellows.

"He let me go," Ed repeats.


	5. Chapter 5

Pinako's waiting for them at the train station when they finally arrive in Resembool. There's a grim determination to the narrow set of her shoulders that Ed can pick out long before they come to a stop. She leans heavily on her cane; weary, but prepared once again to bury a loved one taken too soon. 

What Ed would give for half her strength to carry him through this.

Mei's guards are first to disembark, bounding across the station's pointed rooftop, sure to scare the daylights out of the whole village in the name of security. Mustang's own team moves like molasses in comparison but they're just as absurd and as alien a sight as any of the masked shadows jabbing knives at anybody who gawks overlong. Commands are barked and a neat perimeter is drawn out in a great show of _yessirs!_ and bodies rushing here and there. The next couple of days are shaping up to be a real goddamn clown show with the Elric brothers taking center stage as usual. Course, this time around Ed's stuck doing all the heavy lifting while Al gets to just lay back and look pretty. Lazy, that's what it is. No respect for his big brother at all.

Winry tugs on his arm, so he gathers his coat and both of their suitcases and follows everyone else off the train.

Pinako doesn't give him a pitying smile or any weak condolences. She's better than that. Always has been. She just opens her arms and lets him fall into them. Age has brittled her; he's careful in his hug, wary of fracturing her birdlike frame. But she hugs him so fiercely in turn that his bad shoulder yelps and something in his back pops. Arthritis be damned, she lets him know exactly how much she's grieving too without having to say a word.

Her eyes are damp when she finally lets go. That's all right. Ed's not sure he's stopped mimicking a leaky faucet since the damn telegram. He sniffs, a wet and rude sound, unable to scrub his face with his hands full. She pats his elbow, nodding.

"The Moskofians are taking care of everything," is the first thing she says to him, meaning the family that runs Resembool's funeral home. He hasn't had a reason to talk to them in years, not since he and Al had gone to thank them for handling Hohenheim's burial while they were recuperating in Central. Ed manages a wobbly expression that could be a kissing cousin to gratitude, if one were feeling generous. Lucky him, the old hag is happy to oblige him today.

Pinako takes a turn at tugging him along for a time. First out of the way of all the Imperial Guards maneuvering about at the behest of their red-masked captain, then out of the way of all those clomping boots and flapping cavalry skirts, then through the station and down Main Street as onlookers watch the solemn parade of outsiders go by. A few make to wave or call out when they spot Ed and Winry, but invariably shut their traps and look away once they catch sight of the reason for all the fanfare. Coffins are pretty unmistakable, as shapes go.

They escape Resembool proper with only the inevitable grinding of the gossip mill following them out. The whole village will know Al's—

Everybody will know come sundown. Rockbell Automail will be beset by gifts of wreaths, candles, and food over the next few days, and the deluge won't stop once Ed and Winry leave for home again for that matter. That's just the way of small towns. Everybody's close-knit, everybody owes somebody a favor, everybody cares.

Everybody had loved Al. He was easy to love.

The funeral home sits apart from the road south out of the village, neatly manicured in the way all home businesses tend to be regardless of the business kept inside. The only betrayal to the Moskofians' business, aside from a hand-painted sign hanging from the porch awning, is an old cross-stone in the front yard taller than Ed. Time has worn down the detailed carvings on it, eaten away entirely the name of whatever ancestor is buried beneath it. It's beautiful in a grim, old-fashioned kind of way. Ed's idea of beautiful, not Al's. Best not.

Ancellotta throws open the front door only a beat before the rolling barn-style doors on the side of the house rattle open too, Refosco calling for the Imperial Guard to come 'round. They walk in perfect formation despite the obvious weight of the coffin on their shoulders. Despite its contents too. They vanish inside and the rest of them are all swept up the porch and into the waiting room inside.

Or, Ed realizes once the door's shut behind him, there aren't nearly as many people that followed him here as he assumed. Most of their escort has split off, probably to terrorize the inn. Apart from him, Winry, Mei, and Pinako, there's only a lone sergeant that's tailed them. She takes an immediate post by the front door with the ease of someone long-practiced at keeping an unobtrusive guard. She's a wordless courtesy from Mustang, obviously; in case anything or anybody is needed, Ed can send her to do the fetching instead of having to go himself. Ed knows he ought to be rankled by yet another of Mustang's presumptive gestures, especially at the cost of somebody else's time. He would be, normally, but today is anything but. He's tired, is all, and he vaguely wishes this sergeant could be somebody else's problem.

He sighs and sets their suitcases down, squeezing Winry's arm reassuringly when she gives him a curious look while she's mid-conversation with Ancellotta. The sergeant doesn't spring to attention when he approaches her, thank fuck, but she does roll her shoulders like she's reminding herself not to. He barrels on before she can open her mouth. "I know that asshole told you to tail me, it's fine. I don't care what else he told you to do though, just—this is—we're gonna be here a while, and I don't wanna be thinkin' about you guarding the damn door all afternoon. So just—relax, okay?" He gestures at the canary yellow settee by the wide window, magazines fanned artfully on the glass coffee table in front of it. "Do a crossword, take a nap, whatever. I don't give a shit."

She twitches like she's trying not to gawk. Probably didn't join up until after he'd quit; he doesn't try to think about the crazy shit they say about Fullmetal these days if he can help it. "Thank you," she manages, then hesitates. "I... I'm sorry for your loss."

Fuck but he's already sick of hearing that. He nods anyway.

* * *

Resembool is, first and foremost, a village so small and so far out in the sticks that it shouldn't even be on most maps. It's only included at all because of the rail line, and the only reason the rail line made it all the way up here was because the military wanted wool and wanted it fast. Before him and Al came around Resembool's only claim to fame was a tag on the dress blues most people snipped off because of its tendency to itch like hell.

Point is, for all that modern amnesties manage to wash up here on occasion, it probably won't ever shake that old-fashioned small-town mentality. Traditions are foundational here, not simply humored as they are elsewhere. Things have been done the same way here for generations. Borders and fashions and languages change over time, but people don't. Not really. This stubborn insistence on doing things how they've always been done _because_ that's the way they've always been done used to drive Ed up the wall, but he finds himself grateful for it now.

A perfect example: tradition dictates that it's the family that prepares the dead for burial, so he will. Alone.

"Are you sure?" Winry looks a very particular brand of miserable Ed's not sure there's an adequate word for in any of the languages he's halfway fluent in. Tired and hurting and wrung-out and angry and scared and dreading and relieved and guilty and—

And grief is complicated, unbearably so. They know that better than most people their age.

Ed holds her for a long, necessary moment. "Yeah," he breathes into her hair. "I want to."

She squeezes him gently before pulling away, red-rimmed eyes lingering, heavy with all she could say but chooses not to. She knows he doesn't mean _want._ She knows too, to let it be.

"Wait," Mei pipes up, waving her hands fretfully. Xiao Mei, perched on her shoulders as always, mirrors her perfectly. "That's—the Court Healers already prepared—they took care of everything after—!" She covers her mouth with her sleeve, muzzling herself before she can say something she'll regret.

Ancellota steps in smoothly, waving a thick folder stamped with Xingese characters to draw all eyes to her. "We're grateful for the consideration and care taken thus far, especially with the significant distance Mister Elric's remains needed to travel. We're grateful too for all the information you've provided as well, Princess Chang. However I must insist on deferring to the wishes of Mister Elric's remaining family."

Mei makes like she's going to protest further, but when Ed touches her arm she snaps her mouth shut so fast her teeth click. Her eyes are shiny again when she looks up at him. "Please," she implores. "Edward, I don't want you to _see."_

He pulls her, gently, and she sinks into him with a strangled, smothered keening. For all that she and Winry are nearly the same height Ed is astonished by how much smaller she is as he folds her close. He's not sure if he's ever hugged her before. They've never gotten along, not really. But they both loved Al, and so kept their natural inclination to bitch each other out over every little thing to a minimum for that shared love. And besides, a few months more and she would have been his sister-in-law. Family.

"It's okay," he tells her.

* * *

There are more discussions after that. The preparations done thus far, the scheduling of things to come, set costs, estimated costs, estimated guests, et fucking cetera. So long as Ed ignores the _why_ for all the number wrangling the whole mess of paperwork is almost peaceful. They wrap it all up eventually, at least as much as things can be before the funeral itself, then Ancellotta escorts Winry, Mei, and Pinako out the front door. Her stoic façade melts away the moment they're more or less alone, the sergeant pretending not to exist behind a magazine in the corner. Ancellotta hugs Ed as readily as Pinako did, for all that they're not really anything more than acquaintances of unhappy circumstances.

"Oh, Edward," she says. Not overwrought, not melodramatic, in no way an attempt to be first in a long line of well-wishers and over-eager sympathizers. It's understanding. As simple as that. It's enough to set Ed off again just as he's finally gotten hold of himself.

It's the same routine with the rest of the Moskofians, a whole clan of good-hearted folk who've dedicated their lives and livelihoods to helping others through the practical and necessary aspects of saying goodbye. Gravediggers, coffin makers, and funeral directors the lot of them; the only things they outsource are the flowers and God, and Pastor Darbinian has already been notified that he won't be required to attend the funeral in a formal capacity. Al was as happy to keep religion at arm's length as Ed is, for all that he was nicer about saying so.

His shoulder's sore and his ribs bruised after all the firm handshakes and firmer hugs, but soon enough—far sooner than he'd like—he's taken down to the chilly preparation room where the coffin's been taken. Tradition and modernity are reluctant neighbors here, jostling for equal space. There's a round mirror on the wall covered by a gauzy black cloth; a bucket of water sat beneath it that's covered too. White candles cluster in available corners despite the bank of fluorescent lighting overhead. There are freshly woven wreaths hung on every door. The bare walls are whitewashed stone but every surface is shining chrome and the floor is the same easy to sanitize tile as Pinako's operating room.

Steuben offers to be an extra pair of hands. Ed declines. Perle offers to take measurements for a more traditional burial suit. Ed declines. Dafni offers to help with preparations for the viewing. Ed declines. Mavro offers a selection of more traditional coffins that would be easier to carry and easier to bury. Ed declines. Old Vitofska chases the rest of her family out and offers Ed a drink to steady his hands.

That one, he accepts.

Old Vitofska shares that drink with him, smiling without a tooth in her head and her cataracts all but lost in the folds of her myriad wrinkles. Ed can't remember if she's finally broken 100 or not; either way, she makes Pinako look positively spry in comparison. "He was a good boy," she says, patting his real knee. "You need anything, we're right outside, eh? You say everything you need to. You say your goodbyes."

Once she's tottered out of the preparation room Ed is finally, truly alone. That's fine. It's what he wanted, after all. 

The coffin was sealed with alkahestry rather than nailed shut. Ed swears under his breath, pissed that he's got to make use of that sergeant after all and pissed off twice as much for needing to drag Mei back in here to open it—

—and then he remembers.

Right. Yeah. No need to bother anybody else at all, is there?

A clap of his hands and the sloped lid slides neatly off, more or less. He kind of regrets not taking Steuben up on his offer to be an extra pair of hands. The lid's heavy, sure, but it's more awkward for its size than anything else. Ah, well. He gets it settled on the floor without chipping a corner and only has to take a short breather. It's a win in his book.

He braces himself against the coffin's edge. Takes a steadying breath. Looks.

There's a terrible part of him that doesn't _recognize_ his own fucking brother.

There's a smaller but infinitely worse part of him that wants to run away, leave this last duty to somebody else. It's wrong of him to want. Shameful. He stomps on that feeling until it goes away, then stomps on his disbelief for good measure. In the end, all he feels is... resignation.

Somebody combed Al's hair too neatly after they washed him, dressed him in blue and white robes, and laid him in the white silk interior of this ostentatious coffin. It makes him look wrong in a way that's tolerable, easy to fix. Al liked his hair falling into his eyes, just a bit. He was always good about getting it trimmed regularly but hardly ever bothered with product. Ed's not sure he even owned a comb, the animal. Ed carefully ruffles his hair until it looks right again. His fingers come away dusted with talcum powder.

It takes him too many attempts to speak. Even then his voice is a shadow of itself. He reaches for humor and flounders. "You know, last time it was just me and your body, it had the nerve to—to talk to me. So, h-how 'bout an encore?"

There's no answer, of course. No huff of amusement at Ed's expense. No irritation at Ed's melodrama. Not even a flicker of his eyelids or twitch of his fingers.

Al's gone, and that's all there is to it.

* * *

Hours later, the sergeant springs to attention the moment Ed reenters the waiting room. She's visibly relieved to see him and just as visibly guilty to feel that way. There are nearly a dozen Moskofians collected around her, tea and scones heaped galore, all of them chattering away with aggressive good cheer as she tries to pick her way past. Ed, belatedly, realizes he has no idea what her name is. Ah, well. No sense in asking it now. It's not like he's any good with names at the best of times.

She pastes an anemic smile on her face. "Mister Ro—"

Whatever room temperature drivel she wants to spill all over him, he doesn't want any part of it. "Did Mustang give you the night off or what?"

She blinks at him. "He—that is, the General asked that I escort you until—ah, until such time that you request I leave you alone."

Until he's sick of having her dogging his every footstep, more like. That's probably closer to what Mustang told her too. "Well then, I hope you're hungry, 'cuz you're stayin' for dinner."

"What? Oh, no, I couldn't—"

It hardly takes any glowering at her at all to shut her up. Jeez, Hawkeye usually vets people into the Ishval postings with a little more steel in their spines. She must be a linguist or something. Then again, the only people comfortable in funeral homes are the dead ones. 

"Small town hospitality," he says. "We're gonna be up to our ears in meatloaf and koliva this time tomorrow. You're getting a free meal for putting up with me and that's final."

She flusters a bit, but concedes soon enough. "A-all right then. Thank you."

He turns for the door with a queasy smile pasted on his own face for the benefit of all the Moskofians waiting to bid him goodbye. Course, it's another 15 minutes of niceties before they actually escape. Ancellotta insists on one last hug on the porch, reassuring him all will be ready in time for the wake tonight. Another lingering tradition; wakes are two-night affairs of music, food, and misty-eyed storytelling. Ed doesn't know if he'll have the strength to speak his piece during any of it. Worse still, he knows nobody will fault him for it.

They don't even make it to the road before a voice calls out, "Edward."

The sergeant goes for her gun, not quite drawing it. Ed makes no such move for any of the knives he's gotten in the habit of carrying. He's too tired to be paranoid, least of all here in his hometown. He looks around instead and, after finding no one in sight, remembers there's something like 30 Imperial Guards that came here with them here on the train. He looks back to the roof of the funeral home. There's a lone figure up there—the captain of the lot in his bright red mask. 

This is the first time Ed's paid him proper attention. His uniform is identical to the rest; glossy body armor over thick black clothes loose enough for all the acrobatics expected of them. With the distance between them now he can't make much of the captain's mask out; only the jarring red color and its large white fangs. It takes Ed a beat to recognize it. When he does it almost surprises a laugh out of him. Grief has made him inattentive. He doesn't think Ling will fault him for it.

"I'm not in the mood for your ninja bullshit," he calls out peaceably. "Get down here."

Ling does just that, leaping and landing in a graceful arc that suggests he impersonates his own guards on the regular. Now on ground level the details of his mask become clear. Darker red lines cut through the eye holes; the white fangs become exposed teeth framed by short tusks that glint when he looks at the sergeant. So the stupid mask isn't just for fun. Fair enough. 

Ed jerks his head up the road. "Go on ahead, would ya? It's a straight shot from here. Y'can't miss it."

She balks. "I—I'm not sure that's wise, considering...."

Considering one Elric has already been keelhauled by some secretive Xingese fucker. "It's fine. I know the guy."

"Sir, he's wearing a _mask—"_

 _"Wow,_ so he is. Thank you for pointing that out, I definitely hadn't noticed—" He breaks off with an aggravated snarl, more at himself than at the sergeant. She's just doing her damn job. "Really, Sergeant. This is me requesting you to leave me alone now."

That does the trick, thankfully. She bids him goodbye after a pointed comment about letting Winry know he'll be along shortly and a glower at Ling, who just tilts his head in a way that promises a sunny grin behind the mask. He approaches Ed as the sergeant leaves, though Ed chews his cheek a moment longer. Once she's out of earshot he faces Ling directly, sighing his way into a deep bow—

But Ling catches him by the shoulders. His grip is bruising, his eyes tight behind the lacquered wood. "No," he says firmly. "Not today."

Ed shrugs him off, mouth pressed to a firm line.

"I'm sorry—" Ling laughs without any humor, dropping his hands. "No. An apology now is nothing more than an insult, isn't it. Edward, I... I can't begin to express what this mea—"

"What are you doing here."

"...Officially, I'm not here," he says after a pause, gesturing to the mask. "Unofficially, however, I couldn't bear to stay away."

So that's how it's going to be. He's not here as Emperor Yao, the most powerful man on the planet, but simply as a grieving friend. It would have taken weeks for the Emperor to make all the right demands and requests through the appropriate channels to come here, and it would be as much of a three-ring circus as it had been when he'd insisted on coming to Ed and Winry's wedding. Sneaking here as one of Mei's guards was the expedited option. "Then what _are_ you doing, officially."

Another pause. "...The Emperor has gone into seclusion to mourn the passing of his dear friend and almost brother-in-law. The Emperor has permitted access to his person only to the commander of his personal guard, and has tasked her to be both his voice and his sword until the mourning period has passed. A full vetting of the entire Court is underway, from the youngest stable hand to the Empress Dowager, his own mother." The barest trace of humor dries his voice. "You can imagine how she felt about that."

Ed met the Empress Dowager once, technically, and exchanged all of two sentences with her before she'd given him a razor thin smile and ignored him for the rest of the feast. She'd reminded him sharply of General Armstrong; less that overt ruthlessness that had her threatening to to scalp anybody who mouthed off at her, more the time she'd pulled the wool over General Raven's eyes. Feigning sweetness for the doddering, arrogant men so convinced of their own greatness they don't realize they're dealing with a pit viper until she's slit them open from nose to navel. The Empress Dowager liked Al from what Ed had seen, but then, that could have just been an act too. 

Ed's never had a head for politics. He's regretting it now.

"Lan Fan wanted to be here as well, but...." Ling taps his left shoulder. "A bit obvious, and difficult to replicate convincingly on such short notice. And besides, with a traitor hiding in my Court, she's the only one I trust to handle things in my absence."

"Hmph. She's probably running things better than you ever could."

That earns him a breath of laughter. "No question."

Ed starts walking up the road, Ling following a step behind. Dirt grinds underfoot. He was down in the preparation room longer than he'd realized. The sun's nearly set behind the mountains, the western sky burning a deep orange beginning to bruise. Most of the valley lies dim and still, all the afternoon shadows chased away. This high up it never gets half as hot as it does in Rush Valley. Ed shivers despite his coat.

"We will find who did this," Ling says abruptly. "All of them. Every single person who put this reprehensible scheme together. Every single person who knew of it and sat idly by. I promise you, Edward. They won't walk away from this."

"Pretty words," Ed sneers before he can help himself. He scrubs his stinging eyes with a stinging hand. "Shit. Just—seeking justice is one thing, but he…. Al wouldn't've wanted _vengeance."_

Greed's face tilts toward him; intent, calculating. "And what about you?"

Ed—

—breathes.

He knows they took precautions against this kind of—disaster. Probably more than even Ed was ever told of. Ling and Mei have been dealing with shadows coming after them in the night all their lives. They survived. Not all of their half-siblings were so lucky. This _happens_ in Xing. He knows that. He knows they were more worried about attempts against Mei; not as a possibility but as an inevitability. Hell, there was one less than a year ago. Ed doesn't know the details, just that Al had been the only one to convince Mei to rest rather than go straight to tearing answers out of the assassin one fingernail at a time. This shit's _expected_ there, and as such there are a dozen contingency plans in place for every threat, however improbable.

And besides, it was like Al wasn't—

—hadn't been—

—perfectly capable of defending himself. An outright attack would have all but guaranteed Al would have walked away whistling, just one more story to laugh about later. And there are alkahestrists in Dàdū whose sole duty is to test everything that goes in and out of the palace. Poisonings are attempted now and then, or so Ed's heard, but there's not been a death from one in almost 50 years. So either one of those alkahestrists betrayed the oath they'd sworn, or somebody else managed to slip a single bottle of doctored wine right under their noses. Even then, Al's gotten paranoid; the last time he visited Amestris he'd clapped his hands to check every meal. But—it wasn't like he'd been convinced somebody was gunning for him. It wasn't like he'd _known_ his clock was going to get punched sooner than later. It was—habit. Like looking both ways before crossing the street. Sure you don't hear a car coming, but better safe than sorry, right?

Right.

Subterfuge, then. Betrayal. Somebody Al had known. Somebody he'd trusted. Maybe somebody he'd even considered a friend. Somebody Al wouldn't have thought twice about inviting into his private rooms at night and sharing a glass of wine, never mind the late hour. That won't narrow it down much. Al made friends wherever he went. He was always so goddamn _nice._

There's been an anger growing in Ed ever since the telegram that's been slowly boiling away the numb disbelief he's been hiding behind. He knows there's no chance in hell of keeping this out of the papers. Al's work in Xing is half the reason they still can't go a month without the name Elric hitting the front page. He knows too that Amestris is a country built on bones, still inclined toward bloodshed rather than peace treaties. One day, maybe, it will be different, but if—this—isn't handled right by people with cool heads and open hands, war with Xing might well be inevitable. Nobody wants that, not really. Al would have _hated_ that.

Still.

Still.

Ling hums. "Perhaps now is not the best time to have this conversation."

"No," Ed agrees, relieved. "Perhaps it's not."

They're quiet for a while after that. Ed expects Ling to slink off to wherever the rest of the guards are camping out for the night. But he stays. Rockbell Automail appears at the top of the hill, every window ablaze with lights. The smallest modicum of tension eases in Ed's chest at the familiar sight. He can breathe that little bit easier at the sight of home.

"You're limping," Ling observes.

Ed doesn't bother replying. He's aware, thanks.

"Mei... shared with me what you told her and General Mustang."

Ed huffs, suddenly finding himself at his wit's end, _sick_ of people tripping over themselves trying not to pour salt in a wound. "Oh, _for—_ you've been cooped up in the palace too long. Just spit it out already—or better yet, how about you shut the fuck up and come eat with us. It's been a while since you had a chance to flirt with my wife; you may as well get it out of your system while you've got an excuse to hide your face around people with an ounce of class. Keep the mask on or don't, I don't give a shit and neither should you. Nobody's gonna believe sergeant what's-her-name if she said she watched the Emperor of Xing eat his body weight in meatballs out in the sticks anyway."

"You—" Ling's shoulders are shaking with stifled laughter. "God. I let you get away with entirely too much, Ed."

 _"You_ don't let _me_ get away with shit, and don't you forget that. Your disguise sucks, by the way. I can't believe you think combat pajamas and the tackiest death mask in the world is _low profile."_

"This, coming from the man who sent me a _three-hundred pound_ gargoyle for my birthday."

Ed doesn't even bother retorting, just points at a peacock glowering at them from the low stone wall parallel to the road. That's the straw that breaks Ling's restraint; he laughs, loud and honest, and slings an arm over Ed's shoulders. For a moment, brief though it is, things are—not good, not painless, but... tolerable. For a moment he can stomach the weight, the absence, the grief. For a moment he can tread water without fear of drowning.

They reach the dusty yard, a broad square of spilled light in the deepening dark. Some of the windows are open. Ed can hear faint music and the clattering of dishes, catches the faint smell of freshly baked bread. The tension in his chest eases a little more. Dinner will be a subdued affair, more a steeling for the night to come. But at least he won't be alone for any of it.

"The world is dimmed terribly by his absence," Ling says quietly. The edge of his mask presses against Ed's cheek. "I'm sorry he's gone. Truly I am. But I'm glad you didn't die as well."

Ed swallows, shutting his eyes against the sting. "Too busy to die," he quips instead of what he really wants to say. _It should've been me. If it had to be one of us, it should have been me._

Ling slips free then, tripping Ed to dash up the stairs while he's swearing to open the door with a theatrically deep bow. There's no way the idiot’s not grinning behind the mask. Ed kicks him in the shin once he's close enough and drags him inside.

* * *

That night it seems like the entire village descends on the funeral home like a plague of well-meaning locusts. It's not remotely large enough for that many people, of course, but that's what all the surrounding acreage is for. By the time they come down from Pinako's, far from the first to arrive, the wake is already going all-out. Torches burn in regular intervals around the fenceline, bathing the trimmed grass in flickering orange light. An enormous white tent has been erected in one corner, fairy lights hung in drooping arcs inside. Musicians have gathered in a halfway organized group inside and dancers cavort around the bonfire just beginning to blaze in the center. The air is as warmed by the smell of grilling meat as it is by the sound of violins, drums, flutes, panpipes, and voices raised together in a doleful song.

Ed watches peafowl dip under the fence in ones and twos, strutting right into the crowd to demand scraps out of the hands of laughing children. Spoiled rotten, the whole flock. Or, no. That's not the right word for a group of these stupid birds. Is it pride, like lions? Ah, no, he remembers now. An ostentation, that's it. That's what this whole damn dog and pony show is, really. As ostentatious as that fucking coffin he's going to have stand next to most of the night. He's glad Pinako insisted they all eat beforehand; no way he's going to be able to stomach anything else tonight.

A peacock, iridescent as an oil spill, bobs up to him. Its beady eye glares in the firelight, daring him not to feed it. "Go away," he tells it, waving his empty hands. "I don't have anything. Go on, get."

It does so after another few seconds of affronted glaring, turning around with the slow self-assuredness of the enormous steamers that prowl the ports of the Great Sea. The train of its tail, six feet if it's an inch, skims against Ed's shins as it saunters off elsewhere, wholly confident that it'll find some stupid human to feed it eventually. Ed finds himself feeling vaguely jealous of a fucking decoration with legs and attitude. He decides the smart thing to do is to retreat inside the funeral home, never mind the way _that_ idea makes his skin crawl.

Winry braves the crowd in short bursts, always the better between the two of them at dealing with people. Mostly though, she stays inside too. She talks with and thanks each of the Moskofians, even the youngest one Ed can't remember the name of. He can't be any older than Maes, and he stands in the waiting room directing people to and fro with all the seriousness of an MP handling crowd control at a car accident. Winry helps Ed lay out the white candles and embroidered handkerchiefs that they'll be passing out to guests as they cycle through the viewing room. She has her own private cry over Al when he and Mavro open up the coffin. Ed gives her some time alone, his stomach a hard knot and his throat closed up, then goes over and slips an arm around her waist. She sinks against him, head falling to rest against his shoulder as if she were so tired she could fall asleep right there.

"I... I don't know enough about...." She takes a shuddering breath, unable to say aloud the how of _how_ Al died. There's no kind way to say _heavy metal poisoning,_ and _elixir_ is a cruel slap in the face of all the dreams he and Ed had shared before they'd learned the terrible truth of the Philosopher's Stone. "I just... I hope he wasn't in pain, at the end."

She's moved the unlit candle Ed had placed in Al's hand earlier so she can hold it, smoothing her thumb over his scarred knuckles. The sleeve of his robe has slipped, showing an incongruously dark bruise around his wrist. The difference between their skin tones is all wrong, all wrong. Ed can't help but mimic her shuddered breath. His lungs still _ache,_ even now. "H-he wasn't. I'm sure of it."

"How? Did—could you... _feel_ what he was feeling?"

"No. I mean—kinda, 'cuz I was sick, obviously, but...." He remembers an impossible place, beautiful scenery blurred to suggestions of shapes and colors now that he's awake. He remembers the rain and the relief, and Al laughing. He remembers laughing too. "I... he was in a lot of my dreams, in the hospital. Nonsensical shit, y'know. But some of it was real, I think. Or he was while the dreams weren't. I dunno."

He tells her what he can remember, which isn't much. A party they'd walked out of to talk. Al knowing something Ed didn't and telling him not to worry. Al taking Ed's drink and coaxing him to go back inside, reminding him that he owed Winry a dance.

She slips her hand out of Al's to scrub her face. "Better p-pay up, dummy."

He presses a kiss to her hairline. "Don't I always?"

* * *

The public viewing comes, sooner than Ed's ready for. He puts on a brave face as he stand with Winry beside the coffin, handing out handkerchiefs to the men and white candles to the women, switching it up now and then to spit in the eye of a tradition they both agree is pretty stupid. Everyone who approaches the coffin places a wreath of flowers at its base. Some only pause to say a short prayer, others to simply look. Some turn to face the gathered crowd with wet eyes and open hands as they tell a story about Al. Always a good one, a funny one, one to make people laugh. Ed's name comes up almost as frequently as Al's. "Joined at the hip from the moment Alphonse could walk into trouble alongside you," Francusa Cusbert jokes, and even Ed can crack a smile at that. It's true, after all.

All of the Xingese guards share stories. Ling too, though he pitches his voice almost as low as Greed once did to lessen the chances of anybody recognizing him. Most of what they all share is news to Ed, and half the stories they tell make him wish he could still grab Al by the stupid ties he liked to wear and demand to know what the fuck he'd been thinking to end up in _that_ mess. All of them make him smile for different reasons. It's good, to hear the good Al did in Xing. To hear from the friends and allies he made, the people he protected with alchemy and healed with alkahestry. It's good, to hear the stories Al had been too humble to tell himself.

Mei retreats behind a mask of her own so she can speak without a hitch in her voice or tears in her eyes. She's the picture of poise in her roughspun robe and hood, as regal as the empress she might have been if the Promised Day had turned out a little differently. "I loved Alphonse from the moment I saw him, though perhaps it took me longer than that to realize it." She graces the gathered crowd with a wry smile, a subtle nod to those that know what she really means; the hulking armor Al's soul had once been bound to, and the emaciated boy too weak to stand on his own too. She loved Al not for his looks alone, once he'd healed and grown into them, but for his heart most of all.

She tells a story of the earliest times she tried to teach Al; huddled up in some frost-bitten slum up North years and years ago now, and how they'd shouted their mutual frustration at each other until she'd gone hoarse and he'd stomped off in a huff. She tells another story after that; of a time when Al could _maybe_ string together a half dozen sentences in Xingese, and none of them any use in a crisis. There'd been a fire in a village they'd passed through in Chang territory; small and insular with hardly a literate among them. They'd regarded Al with suspicion until he'd clapped his hands and put the fire out with a clever bit of alchemy. After that the villagers had called him _Shinito,_ a perfect being equal to the Western Sage. Al had blushed and blustered while Mei had laughed herself sick.

Mustang and Hawkeye arrive separately from the rest of their cronies. All of them are in their dress blues but there's a poise to how the two of them carry themselves the others lack; an unflappable confidence paired with a... fragility, perhaps, to their faces. They stand burdened. There's more gray in Mustang's hair than the last time Ed saw him with it slicked back. It's a shame Ed's not in the mood to make fun of him for it.

They place their wreaths atop the heaped pile and stand over the coffin for—a long time. 

Hawkeye's the first to turn away; abruptly, like she can't stomach seeing Al so still a second longer. She doesn't share a story, which doesn't surprise Ed. She pulls him and Winry into a fierce hug, which does. Her mouth is pressed to a thin white line as she accepts a handkerchief from Winry. She nods at Ed; once, firmly. It's all she has to do to say, _I'm with you, whatever you decide to do about this._ He nods back, throat tight. _Thank you._

Mustang faces the crowd. Abruptly Ed finds himself recalling the Promised Day, when he'd burned all those mannequin soldiers to so much greasy ash with a snap of his fingers. It had been the first time Ed had ever _really_ seen the Hero of Ishval in action. Gone was the flirtatious layabout. Gone too was the good man Ed had learned Mustang to be. All his masks had been boxed up and hidden away in some private cellar, leaving only the unflinching tactician. A job needed doing, and Mustang would see it done.

There's that same cold fury in his eyes now.

"You all remember the eclipse," he says bluntly. This isn't the politician speaking. He has no patience for pretty words tonight. "It was the Elric brothers who uncovered that plot in time. We'd all be dead today if not for them. We owe them a debt that can never be repaid as it justly deserves."

Ed's jaw feels wired shut as he hands Mustang a candle. Their eyes meet briefly, and then Mustang turns on his heel and is gone. Another person takes his place before the coffin, and another, and another. The night grows long. Ed aches for silence, but what he gets is music and stories, laughter and song, good food and better company. It's an old-fashioned way of thinking, to demand joy from a funeral.

Al would have loved to see everyone so happy.

* * *

Few people stay the entire night, but more than Ed expected promise to return in the morning to keep vigil so he and Winry can get some sleep. When they finally leave the sky is just beginning to gray. Ed's so wrung out by small kindnesses he can only bob his head stupidly when Refosco claps his arm and assures him the gravesite will be finished that afternoon.

Pinako had hugged Ed, Winry, and Mei again before she'd left early too. Her bedroom window is dark when they get to her house but she'd left an oil lantern burning low on the dining table for them. Su, always happy for visitors, circles through their legs sniffing curiously. She leans against Ed's knees as he scratches her behind the ear, tail wagging gently as she looks up at him with her dark eyes too attentive. Even the damn dog knows something is all wrong, all wrong.

Mei retreats into Ed's old room without a word. He and Winry creep up the stairs to her old room, barely capable of shedding their clothes before collapsing into each other. Ed tries to sleep without much success. Winry seems to have better luck, only awake and staring once whenever he blinks out of his own restless doze. She's sleeping soundly when Ed gives up and gets up, which he's grateful for. Once Maes and Nina are added to the mix, two bundles of elbows and knees squeezed between them on this ancient mattress, they're sure not to manage any sleep at all.

He disentangles himself and gets dressed without more than a couple snuffles of almost-wakefulness from Winry. He smoothes the blanket over her and, shoes in hand, tiptoes down the stairs. He needs some air.

Pinako's awake and waiting for him at the dining table. There's a cup of coffee and a plate of fresh toast waiting for him. "Thought that was you clattering around up there," she says by way of greeting.

She joins him on the porch for her morning smoke, him sat on the top step and her swallowed up by the enormous squashy chair he'd hauled up the hill for her a few years back. Su noses Ed's arm now and then, hoping he'll share a bit of crust with her. She's not half as well-mannered as Den had been, but she's a sweet thing. He nurses his coffee, picking at his toast to make it look like he eats more of it than he does. Pinako inhales and sighs a couple of times behind him like she's got something she doesn't want to say but knows it needs saying. In the end the only thing she does say is, "Leave it on the railing, I'll get it," when he's finished and stood up, brushing the back of his trousers off.

He raises a curious eyebrow at her. She raises one right back.

"Give them my best, won't you? It's been a while since I've made it out to the cemetery."

"Witch," he replies agreeably. Whole family of mind readers, these Rockbell women. That, or he's gotten predictable in his old age. 

* * *

The only flower shop in town is, predictably, a total madhouse when Ed walks in. For all that it looked like every flower in 20 kilometers had ended up in the funeral home last night, there's hardly room to walk in here now. No real surprise there. This is the biggest—event—that's happened in Resembool since his and Winry's wedding, and back then the Caddeos had needed to outsource from a couple shops up in Angren to meet demand.

He's relieved to see Rosarra at the counter. He's never liked dealing with Mrs. Caddeo and Mr. Caddeo doesn't seem to like dealing with _him,_ but their daughter's all right. Her eyes are bruised with exhaustion and there's already an over-caffeinated jitter to her hands despite the early hour, but she's an honest type. She's pleased to see him, sorry for the reason he's here, and not the type to simper to him about any of it.

"Any of these not accounted for?" He jokes. Tries, anyway. It's weak even to his own ears.

She gives him a wane smile anyway. "No, but since they're all goin' to the same place I doubt anybody'd notice if you helped yourself. Already paid for and everything, how ‘bout that?"

Yeah. She's alright in Ed's book.

She puts together his usual order and lends him a basket too, no hurry in returning it. She refuses payment since the flowers really are all already paid for, so he settles for tipping what they're worth and a little extra for her trouble. She waves him off without any _best wishes_ or _so sorrys,_ which he's grateful for. He's sick to death of all that already.

Izumi's waiting for him outside.

He stills at the sight of her. She’s dressed for the mountain chill, all in black, the sleeves of her jacket straining as she crosses her arms and gives him a stony once-over. Her eyes linger on the week-old bruise on his face, the stippled slash from his automail still a raw and aching wound. Her jaw works like she’s debating between chewing him out or simply tossing him ass over teakettle down the street. He’s not sure which one he’d prefer. He knows he’d do anything not to see her cry too.

She sighs and holds out her arms in a wordless insistence. Ed thinks he should feel silly, hugging her right there in the street, but he’s too busy trying not to break down yet a-fucking- _gain_ to care about anybody seeing.

“You look like hell,” she says by way of greeting. It’s got the intended effect surprising a weak laugh out of him.

“Gee. W-wonder why.”

She hums, letting go to brush his bangs aside for a better look at his face. Her mouth thins but she doesn't comment, nodding past him instead. "Sig went on ahead. We thought we'd handle dinner tonight." 

There's a wagon kicking up dust down the road on its way out of town, loaded down with goods covered by a stretched tarp, two men perched on the back. Mason's one of them, most likely, and the other…. "Is that Havoc?"

"We ran into them on the train from Central. The rest of that lot should all be on the evening train."

Them? Ed squints, able to make out the slight form and dark curls of Rebecca sat next to Sig at the front of the wagon. Ah. Speaking of the evening train, though. “Thought you’d be on that one too, with Pan and the kids.”

She cuffs him lightly on the back of the head, walking after the wagon. “Can’t trust you on your own, now can I?”

He huffs, but doesn’t dispute that. 

The walk out of town is quiet after that, which suits Ed just fine. He didn’t plan for company this early in the morning and he’s fairly certain his capacity for chitchat didn’t get out of bed with the rest of him. It’s a nice morning, as most mornings are this time of year out here. Thin clouds scud across a cornflower blue sky. The craggy mountains and rolling fields are all shades of emerald green, purple and yellow wildflowers cheerful splashes of color here and there. A mild breeze is even in their favor; he can hardly catch a whiff of sheep shit. It’s a nice walk. His stump hardly pains him at all.

Of course, the good morning sours once the cemetery comes into view. His heart crawls into his throat at the sight of two men crouched casually beside where he knows his parents’ graves are. The men—Refosco’s sons, their names escaping Ed now that he actually needs to remember them—spring to their feet like they’ve been caught napping on the job rather than taking a needed water break. Gravedigging is hardly an easy job, after all.

"Good morning!" Izumi calls out with convincing cheer. They greet her in kind. Ed doesn’t bother. He wouldn’t convince anybody he’s cheerful of anything right now, and he’s not interested in faking for civility’s sake anyway. He hangs back, resting against the low fenceline, as Izumi strides off to effortlessly charm these two, all smiles and open body language. It never stops being weird when she pulls this friendly shit. 

He tunes them out, eyes drifting past them to where the Rockbell plot is. He didn’t buy enough flowers to leave any for Auntie Sara and Uncle Yuriy, but he’ll be back with Winry to visit them at least once before they leave. He’ll have to remember to bring Pinako’s gardening tools; even from here he can tell their headstones need tending to. 

He and Winry have been talking baby names again. Maes had been her idea, and her idea as well to ask Gracia and Elicia for permission. Nina had been his idea. There’d been no one left in her extended family to ask, nor a grave of her own to visit either. Brigadier General Hughes and the rest of his team had taken her twisted body back to Central, handed it over to one of the labs, and… who knows what happened after that. He’s tried not to wonder. It eats at him still.

They’ll find out in a couple weeks what the new baby’s going to be. They both still like the idea of honoring people rather than simply picking something that sounds nice, and they’ve been talking about using one of their parents’ names this time around. Ed had thrown his head back and _cackled_ at the idea of saddling a kid with a name as ludicrous as _Van Hohenheim_ , and he was first to admit that _Trisha_ was still too loaded for him to put any serious consideration into either. Sara and Yuriy are good names, and Ed knows Pinako would approve in a heartbeat, but Winry’s seemed a touch reluctant. Not that Ed blames her, considering. It’s her decision. If she decides she’s not comfortable with naming their baby after either of their parents, then that’s fine. 

Ed, briefly, considers naming the baby after Al if it turns out to be a boy, but….

He closes his eyes. Too soon. Not yet. Maybe not ever. 

Izumi raises her voice, drawing him back to the present. “A bit farther than that, if you don’t mind.” There’s the clap and crackle of alchemy after that, and Ed watches the two men scramble back as the shallow hole they’d dug widens and deepens beneath tongues of bluewhite light, all the extra earth distributed elsewhere. Hours of backbreaking labor taken care of, just like that.

“Holy….” One of them breathes out.

“Incredible,” the other agrees faintly.

“I think that should take care of things here, gentlemen,” Izumi says, grinning wide. “It looks like the day is yours.”

They take the hint and gather their equipment, thanking her profusely all the way. They pause to bow at Ed by the cemetery entrance, murmuring soft condolences. He nods back, trying to keep the grimace off his face. Still, he feels some ghost of amusement as he watches them go, their eyes agog every time they look back over their shoulders at Izumi. There’s something akin to bone-deep satisfaction in witnessing a fine display of talent and skill. It doesn’t matter what it is; you see something impressive, you want to take the time to appreciate it.

He kicks off the fence, going over to join Izumi. The fresh grave is beside his old man’s. He can’t remember if he decided that or if Pinako took the initiative. Either way it seems fitting, putting Al that little bit closer to Xing. “You know I’m still gonna have to pay them, right?”

“And here I thought you’d be grateful for a little peace and quiet.”

He rolls his eyes. She’s not wrong, after all. 

It takes more effort than it should to kneel at the foot of his parents’ graves. He’s tired from walking already. He wonders how much of this is exhaustion and grief and how much of it is him still recovering from his fucking echo-copy of Al’s poisoning. He wonders if it’s possible he’ll ever recover fully now that their connection is severed for good. You never realize how much you rely on one part of yourself until it’s gone for good. Ask him how he knows.

He places a bouquet before each headstone; first Mom, then the old man. A couple of decades has been long enough that Mom's epitaph has begun to blur, exposure wearing away the words one Moskofian or another had once carved. Give it a few more years and the old man's will start to look the same. Anonymity claims everybody, in the end.

“Keep an eye on him for me ‘til I get there, huh?” Fingers crossed that's still a long ways off, but hey, life’s full of surprises. He thinks there should be more to say, but the yawning hole on his right seems adamant on swallowing his every thought. This time tomorrow they'll be putting Al to rest in there. Ed hasn't figured out what he wants to put on his headstone. He's trying not to think about that, if he's honest. Too many people in this family die too damn young.

_Alphonse Elric. Too damn young._

Yeah. Might be too morbid to say it so frankly. Best not.

It takes even more effort to get to his feet. He nearly loses his balance, gasping through a shock of pain. He stands there; staring, catching his breath through slow, familiar prickles of pain. It will pass. It will _pass._ All things must pass.

Izumi’s watching him too closely again when he turns, stern concern and a too-familiar grief etching fresh wounds in every inch of her. He can’t bear to have the conversation she so clearly wants to have yet; he brushes past her out of the cemetery, up the road, all the way up the steep hill where their house had stood once upon a time. He knows she follows him, hears her footsteps grinding up the dirt road behind him, but she chooses to be kind. She says nothing. She gives him space to breathe.

The ruins of their old house astonish him every time he makes the trek all the way out here. It’s been almost wholly devoured by overgrowth, only the barest shape of stone foundations left to suggest something had been built here once upon a time. The dead tree had fallen years ago and had been claimed by some neighbor or another for firewood one particularly cold winter. The garden’s completely overgrown, a tangle of weeds and tomatoes and sunflowers. The land still belongs to him, technically. He and Winry have talked about doing something with it eventually. Selling it. Rebuilding the house. Something. It feels a waste to just let it remain as it is. But there have been distractions heaped upon distractions, and so it still remains—overgrown, ignored, a stain that can’t be scrubbed clean.

Ed skirts the ruins, circling around the back until he comes to the familiar sight of the headstone he’d transmuted years and years ago now. He doesn’t trust his own strength to kneel here too, unsure whether or not he’d be able to haul himself up again and unequivocally certain he’s in no mood to ask Izumi for help either way. He ends up hunched in on himself, slouching as he struggles to catch his breath. He remembers a time not so long ago when this walk would have been inconsequential.

God, but he’s so tired. 

God, but there’s still so much more to do.

He drops the last bouquet against the blank headstone. This too, is an old habit. The three of them would make their small pilgrimage to the cemetery every time at least one of them found themselves in Resembool, and he or Al would finish the trek all the way up here. This body was only ever half-formed, a thing of hope dashed to pieces against the Gate. It wouldn’t have so much as twitched if Truth hadn’t decided to claim Al’s entire body as a toll. 

“What’s so funny?”

He blinks. It’s only then he realizes he’s been laughing under his breath. Whoops.

“S’just—funny, is all,” he says, still chuckling weakly. “This—it’s not the first time I’m gonna bury Alphonse, technically.”

She hums. He doesn’t have to say more than that. This isn’t the first time she’s seen this grave, after all. She knows the whole story. Al’s the one who told her, after all.

“I can do alchemy again,” he tells her.

She doesn’t tense. She doesn’t swivel to stare at him aghast. He feels her eyes burning him anyway.

“I dunno if it’s a—fucking _—refund,_ or if Al had the time to haggle with Truth, or what. But I can. That’s how I knew he was….”

He shuts his eyes when her hand touches his back, pressing between his shoulder blades at the center of his flamel tattoo. He’s wearing too many layers to feel the warmth of her hand, but the pressure is—comforting. A mute reminder of so many years ago.

_It’s okay to hurt._

He knows that. _God,_ but he knows that. Doesn’t stop the hurt from stealing his breath away though, does it?

She hums again. “Don’t look now, but here comes trouble.”

He looks anyway. There where the road thins to weeds he can see Mustang approaching, familiar in shape if not in apparel; he can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen Mustang out of uniform. He seems narrower without it. Thinner, more human. Ed would shy away if there were anywhere left to run. 

“Bet you he’s gonna try and convince me not to try human transmutation again,” he jokes.

“He knows?”

“Yeah.”

She hums.

“I’m not gonna,” he tells her. He knows better than that. Doesn’t mean he wishes he didn’t.

“I know that,” she answers, like she’d hit him upside the head if they weren’t stood before Al’s first grave. “Good luck convincing him that.”

It’s gratifying, to hear her irritation. A relief. He laughs. It’s a strained sound, forced out beneath the weight of everything else. But it’s a start.

Her hand on his back reminds him anew. Yock Island. All that she’d taught them after; when they were kids, and countless times after that too. _All is one, one is all._ Maybe he has an idea of what he’ll put on Al’s headstone after all. Maybe not. He still has a couple days to decide.

He turns to face Mustang, smirking in the face of the other man’s grim determination. It almost feels like old times.

The only thing he can do next is keep moving forward. For all that grief yawns within him, he’s not alone in this; not now, not ever. 

He can do this. 

He can move forward, for Al’s sake.

_I woke up and I had a big idea_ _  
__To buy a new soul at the start of every year_  
 _I paid up and it cost me pretty dear_ _  
Here's a hymn to those that disappear_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title song is Porcupine Tree's ["Buying New Soul"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Glc7Ww0bUSg). 
> 
> You can blame [this particular Tumblr post](https://anthropwashere.tumblr.com/post/626932005280579584/holy-shit-realization) for this story's existence.
> 
> Thank you very much for reading. You're all lovely. <3


End file.
